Nap Nirvana

... I'm in it!  I have finally reached the absolute best and most fabulous nap phase of babies ... all three kids are taking one long nap every day.  Woo hoo!  I have literally been looking forward to this since the day Sweet Pea and Little Man were born.  I am so excited to be here!

The one-nap-a-day schedule is nap nirvana because it still gives me a good, long break every afternoon to do laundry or clean the house (or, let's be honest -- blog), while still giving us all time to get out of the house and do things in the morning or the afternoon.

CC didn't transition to one nap a day until 15 months old, shortly before Sweet Pea and Little Man were born.  And I'd assumed that it would be about the same with the twins.  But Sweet Pea, my little contrarian, isn't much of a sleeper and had been resisting the two-nap schedule for a while already.  Little Man, like CC, needs a lot of sleep and could have kept two naps for quite a while longer.  But after trying to keep two different nap schedules for the twins (and failing miserably -- it was too hard to manage), I decided to just transition them.  I'm basically splitting the difference: they're transitioning a few months later than Sweet Pea would have liked, and a few months earlier than Little Man would have liked.

I. Love. It.  I was just telling MJ the other day that every morning I wake up and think, "What should the kids and I do today?"  Our possibilities seem so endless.  We could actually go to the library for storytime (which used to conflict with the twins' morning nap).  Or we could go on a playdate before dinner (which used to conflict with the twins' afternoon nap).  We can make a trip to the mall into a fun outing, with time for the play area and lunch.

It's just so stinkin' hard to get out of the house when you're working around two naps a day.  We would do it, of course, but our outings always had to be quick.  By the time the kids were up and fed and loaded into the car, we'd have about an hour before we had to come back home for another nap.

This one-nap schedule will last years, and I will love every second of it.  They wake at 7:30, nap from 1-3, and go to bed by 6:30.  Bliss, I tell you.  Life is good.