What is cuter...

than a baby asleep (on the floor). I would love to say that Mae got so tired that she fell asleep like this but she didn't. She fell asleep in my arms and instead of walking all the way upstairs and putting her in the crib (and risk waking her up), I laid her on the floor. She stayed this way for about 20 minutes.

On to the sleep topic, that was the parent education topic today at "baby college." I have been pretty fortunate to have a really great night time sleeper -- except that month and half that we were up three to six times in the night for Mae to nurse (that is a topic for another day) -- however, naps have been pretty elusive to me. First, I feel that many "experts" speak about how a child Mae's age should have consolidated their naps into a morning and afternoon nap. Well that hasn't really happened for us. Second, I feel that all these "experts" say that babies should be getting two naps anywhere from an hour to an hour and half. That has never happened. For the last couple of weeks, I have tired to be more committed to developing some day time sleep routines. I will admit that previously I have been less than focused on this. Actually pretty uncommitted to it. If I try to put Mae down and it takes longer than 20 minutes, I give up. I figure why waste each other's time. In the last couple of weeks, Mae has kind of evolved from "mellow Mae" to a moodier version of herself. I feel that some of her daytime fussiness is attributed to her lack of day time sleep. I am very well aware that this is just my theory. Mae's fussiness could be attributed to anything but that.

Pearson and I came to an understanding about expectations around sleep when Mae was three weeks old. At that time she was getting up and staying up for an hour and half in the middle of the night. What we decided if we were able to shift our expectations around sleep we were much more capable of handling the night ahead. So instead of going to bed and saying, "I really, really, really hope Mae sleeps 5 hours straight tonight and when she wakes up she goes right back to sleep." We would say, "Mae is going to be up in three hours and we are going to sit on the exercise ball bouncing her for 45 minutes to an hour and half to get her back to sleep. Awesome, can't wait to do that at 2:30 in the morning." When we were able to shift our expectations we were much better equipped to handle it. I realized today at school that maybe I need to do that about napping. The woman who led the discussion said that about 30 percent of babies don't nap as the "experts" say. Maybe Mae is not "the baby" that takes two huge naps a day but rather spaces her sleep out over the course of a day in 20 minute intervals. I think that my frustration about her not napping has been more my frustrations. When she only naps in short spurts then I can't get anything done. Again, maebe, she is a power napper, instead a long siesta kinda of gal. Looks like, again, I need to change my expectations and realize I can't control it all.