Routines

Tonight I had an interesting experience.

We've started to sleep train, just a little bit. I'm not doing scheduled nap times, though I did think about it. I tried it once and it just didn't seem to work well. I think I'm more of the put her down for a nap when she's showing signs of being tired school of thought. From what I've read though, that's apparently too late. Oh well. I'll make a change if I think it's not working for us. What I am doing is following a consistent routine before putting her down for naps.

My husband and I take turns being the primary parent, and today was his day. It doesn't mean that I'm not around or interacting with my daughter. But it does mean that I can go out and run errands alone, or go take a nap without having to make sure he'll watch Maddie. In the same way, when it's my turn, my honeypot can go take his "monkey training classes" or do whatever he'd like without having to wonder if he'll be watching Maddie then. (He often works on the house - yeah!)

Today my honeypot was putting Maddie down for a nap and he just walked over to her crib and put her in it. I asked him to do the routine that we had set up for her naps and he did actually do it. It's an interesting issue because on the one hand I saw how tired she was and I can believe that she would have just gone straight to sleep. But on the other hand, the entire point is to create a consistent routine and have consistent cue's for her so that she knows what's going on. I feel like especially in the early days of implementing this nap routine, it's not a good idea to deviate. But I also understand that maybe the routine isn't necessary. It's hard to know what effect not being completely consistent in something like this really is. I'm pretty sure that the nap routine isn't probably being consistently implemented by our Nanny during the days, but I really don't know that.