Sandman on Strike

I think my kids sleep too much at daycare. Every day we get the slips recording their activities, what they ate, and when they slept. And every day it shows that Kirk had a 3 hour nap and that Veronica napped for a total of 5 or 6 hours. That just seems ridiculous to me.

Ronnie is a tricky baby to get to sleep at night. She’s been that way almost since the beginning but hey, every kid is different. She is very easy during the day and very difficult at night. At least once a week for the past few months she will quite simply not go to sleep, causing me to give in and take her to bed with me at midnight when I couldn’t take it anymore. I was starting to really worry about it until superbadfriend sent me this link to 31 Ways to get Your Baby to go to Sleep. Sure, most of that is just common sense stuff that we’re already doing. But I needed the reminder and it was good to see some things in writing that related to specific actions of my naughty bundle, like thinking that the snack bar is open all night if she’s in bed with me.

Typically Ronnie will nurse herself to sleep, I’ll put her into her crib, then she’ll wake up an hour or so later, we’ll repeat, and then she’ll stay in her crib for the rest of the night. Or at least until about 5am at which point I don’t have a problem bringing her in bed with me for the remaining hour and a half until my alarm goes off. So the inability to get her to stay asleep, or go back to sleep after the initial pre-bedtime snooze, has been very frustrating. I’ve ascribed countless theories to try to explain it. She’s got a cold right now and a nasty sounding cough and I’m sure that’s affecting things. Mr. b says it’s just a phase. And lord knows having her brother up and rattling around in the bed next to her isn’t doing anything to help.

That’s why I’m starting to wonder if it might be the amount of sleeping during the day. Kirk just will not go to sleep at night either. Sure, he goes to bed with a relative minimum of fuss. But then he stays up for sometimes two or more hours, “reading” books by flashlight or talking to himself or his easily awakened sister. Then in the morning he’ll complain of being “so tired” and I’m sure he really does need the nap at daycare to recover from his late night. And the cycle continues.

At home on the weekends Kirk usually doesn’t nap, though I still enforce Quiet Time if we’re not out and about. If he got up extra early then I’ll make him lay down or if he’s particularly cranky but he’s four and doesn’t necessarily *need* the nap every single day. When he does nap at home, I wake him up if it’s been two hours. That’s his limit; anything longer and he won’t go to bed. So it’s kind of dismaying to see such a long time written on his “report card”. Maybe it’s not actually sleep that entire time. I know that C makes all the kids, regardless of their ages, lay on their cots, so maybe a good portion of that time is resting not sleeping. But I suspect there’s more sleeping than not.

Which brings me back to Bundle. At home on the weekends she’ll usually sleep in with me until around 9 or 10. That’s when she would be waking up from her morning nap at daycare according to the take home slips. And that’s fine. Babies need multiple naps a day. Even though it looks like she goes down for her morning nap sometimes less than a half hour after we drop her off. But what concerns me is that it then looks like she’s up for a measly two hours and then spends the rest of the day napping again. Another four hours. She’ll be up when we pick her up but generally only long enough to have an afternoon bottle. But again, what portion of that time is spent actually napping and what is time laying by herself, alone in her crib in the other room? At home she’ll typically do her afternoon nap on the boob but if I put her in her crib it’s about an hour tops of solid sack time. I’m afraid to ask about it because I don’t know how to bring it up and I don’t want to learn that she’s just a crib baby at daycare. She’s always creeping around on the floor when we pick her up, and in good spirits, but is that because she’s finally getting some attention for the first time since before Noon?

Maybe Mr. b is right and it’s just a phase. For both of them. But it seems like they’re feeding off each other with the no sleep thing at night. I haven’t changed anything about their night time routines. So I feel like daycare is the only logical option left to investigate. But how do I approach it?