Elle....why do you hate naps??

Hmmmm.....Elle will be 6 months in 5 days, and so far things have been so good!!
She naps 3 times a day and sleeps through the night.

Until yesterday apparently.....

Dad had to work all day and night so it was just me. I didn't work yesterday so we had the whole day together. Typically her first nap is at 9:30am and this one went normally. Down by 9:30, up about 11:15am. I fed her a bit early and we went out and met Daddy for lunch. When we got home she should have slept. Well that didn't happen. As soon as I put her down in her crib she started to cry....and didn't stop until I got her out. I tried to rock her to sleep and she just cried...until I sat her up. Once she was upright and looking around she was fine. OK, I thought, maybe she just isn't tired yet. I let her play for about 15 minutes then tried again to put her down. Same thing, lots of crying (this is a baby who truly rarely cries...I am not kidding, so this is so odd to me). I sort of have a rule about naps and bedtimes, once she is in her crib I try really hard not to pick her up. Well yesterday I had to throw that out the window. She seriously had no interest in being in her crib and it was heartbreaking hearing her cry. I grabbed her again, tried again to hold her, rock her and put her to sleep. No luck. At this point we were approaching her feeding time so I decided to just feed her, and hope she wanted to sleep once her belly was full.
FAIL! She ate, and wanted to play. So I read to her, played with her, sang to her, the usual things we do while she is awake. I just decided to move forward with our day, as usual. Once it came time for her last nap, the same thing happened. She cried a lot, although she was showing signs of being tired she wouldn't lay down. Every time I put her in her crib she would roll over, lift herself up and look around. She would not put her head down and would not go to sleep. I gave her some time and nothing changed. I pulled her out, gave her a bath, rubbed her nighttime lotion on her and swaddled her up. I put her in her swing and hoped for the best. She hasn't been swaddled in forever and hasn't been in her swing for a nap for even longer. I was at my wits end. I know days like this are totally normal and I am sure she was in some sort of growth spurt, but it was just hard because it was me all alone all day with her. After about 15 minutes she fell asleep in the swing. SCORE!!! This was probably about 5:45pm. We had been trying to take a nap for about 4 hours. What an afternoon!! I was having a friend over to watch LOST and Elle slept the whole time she was here. She slept through her last feeding (usually 8pm-ish), and I just let her go. I figured she needed it. I got her up at 11pm when I went to bed, fed her and she went right back down.

She slept until about 7:30am, which is becoming the norm for her. So now here we are....today was very similar to yesterday. I had to work so I knew she would be a little off, but I expected better than what I got. She slept in the car on the way to work for probably 30 minutes (8:45am-9:15am). She didn't sleep again until after 2pm, and once again she only slept for about 30 minutes!! (Again, we were in the car, on our way home from dropping a friend at the airport). Once I got home she played with Daddy for a bit since he didn't get to see her yesterday. He tried to put her down for a nap and we had a repeat of yesterdays cry fest. I had a feeling she wasn't going to go down easy, it was almost time to eat. We decided to just let her stay up until her next nap, after her feeding. She ate at her usual time, played for a bit and when it was time to sleep just played in her crib. She managed to turn herself 180 degrees while in there. She wasn't crying this time (THANK GOD), but she also wasn't sleeping. I gave her about 30 minutes of play time in her crib before I grabbed her, stripped her and put her in the tub. I gave her a nice long bath, followed by her nighttime lotion and laid her back in her crib. Within 5 minutes she was asleep.

She went down about 6pm, let's see if tonight is a repeat of last night, where she just sleeps the rest of the day. If she does, that is fine. Maybe now that she is getting a bit older it is time to revisit her daily schedule. These past two days have definitely been different from what we are used to, but hey, this is motherhood....I have to learn to adapt.

It is hard looking back at the day and realizing so much time was spent TRYING to get her to sleep. These are times we could be playing, going for walks, reading, etc. I am going to really watch her over the next few days to see what she wants. Like I said, maybe she is growing and things will go back to normal, or maybe things are changing. Lots of babies take 2 naps a day, maybe Elle's time is here.