We tried to visit my parents at their home on Saturday late afternoon to celebrate Father’s Day a day early, but Allie took such an epic noon nap (she slept for 30 minutes, woke and fussed and cried for 20, then dropped down and slept another hour and 45 minutes until I went to wake her up cuz it was getting so late) that by the time we hit the road and had to deal with the massive freeway congestion due to an early car accident, we realized there wouldn’t be enough time to spend at my parents’ until we had to turn around and take the long drive back home. So I called my mom and postponed the visit for a day. Instead, the three of us had a dinner out at The Counter (gourmet burgers) and ran some errands at Home Depot so that Mr. W could re-landscape two little areas in our front yard. Allie does pretty well at the restaurants in the high chair now, provided we bring along her purees and feed her there first. After that she plays with her toys at the table and people-watches.

Sunday, Allie’s napping was even worse than what she did to us on Mother’s Day. It seems like she knows when the holidays are and makes sure to give us a hard time as her own little joke. I remember Thanksgiving and Christmas being major cry-days. Mother’s Day, she had a difficult noon nap and then phased out her 3rd nap. Yesterday on Father’s Day, Allie fell asleep in my arms while I soothed her to sleep for her morning nap, but the doze didn’t survive the put-down, and she refused to go back down. I picked her up, she settled into sleeping position immediately on me, dozed off again, and again, when I put her in her crib, she woke up and popped up on her hands and knees, refusing to go down. This time I walked out so she could soothe herself into sleep, as she’d done before. However, now that she could do all sorts of stuff to keep herself awake, such as roll around, sit up, play with the bumpers, crawl to a different section of the crib to look out, she was active and cried through her entire morning nap period. As soon as I got her at the end of the nap time, she was fine.
During Allie’s 45 minutes of screaming, rolling, crawling, sitting, and crying, it was very hard for me but I sat on my hands and stared at the monitors, doing what I have learned through much research to do (i.e., nothing). Mr. W came downstairs and said it was pointless how I was just “torturing her.” I told him it’s not torture, it’s sleep-training, but I think he was upset at me all day anyway. He enjoys the fruits of a well-rested baby, but he hates me for it and the process. I guess I have to be okay being alone in this if my priority is doing what I think is best for Allie’s development. I’d read other resources recently suggesting the exact same thing I’m already doing, and saying that now is an essential time to put her sleep needs and nap training into action.
Allie’s noon nap lasted over an hour and she was out solidly, didn’t even turn her head. At this point I had spoken to my mom and told her I would be putting Allie down around noon and she’d sleep hopefully an hour, and my parents offered to come to us so that we wouldn’t spend so much of Allie’s very limited awake time on the road. They were running on Asian time and didn’t get to our house until almost 3:15 and were surprised when I said Allie was about to take her 3rd nap. My mom said accusingly, “You told me she was going to be done with her nap!”
I said, “Yeah, at 1. It’s 3:15!”

So Allie spent about 15 minutes playing with an excited pair of grandparents before I took her upstairs to try for her “as needed” 3rd nap, the nap she’d been phasing out almost half the time. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and fell asleep on me, but as with the morning, she woke up and resisted at put-down. I picked her up, she immediately went to sleep on me again, and protested upon put-down. I tried the put-down three separate times but finally gave up. She did get a few minutes of dozing on me, I guess. I was a sweaty mess and just took her back downstairs. Mr. W looked a little smug when he saw my nap efforts failed. He reminded me he’d told me that she wouldn’t take it, but I had to try because she’d missed one nap already. We all went to a Chicago pizzeria for an early dinner. Allie’s moods were fine the whole day except for when she was crying during nap protests.
Mr. W suggested going to a nearby park with my parents on our way home as it was still early, 5:30p. So we played there awhile, with my mom being papparazzi.

Allie with Daddy and Grandpa on Father’s Day. My dad said that they went to Sprouts just before they got to our house, and a young male grocery checker looked up at my dad and said good-naturedly, “Oh, happy Father’s Day!” My dad thought it’d be fun to give the poor kid a hard time and said, “How do you know I’m a father?” Awkward. Dad laughed telling the story, saying the kid just assumed that because Dad is gray-haired that he must have kids.

Allie tries to stand when she’s sitting, even without something to pull herself up with. She’ll just bounce up and down on her butt hoping that miraculously, she’d bounce high enough to end up on her feet. When we offer her a hand, she eagerly takes it and pulls herself up to stand and walk.

She had a lot of fun being bounced around on daddy’s shoulders, having access to pluck things she couldn’t any other way, such as leaves and daddy’s hair.

In the car on the way to the park, my dad asked, “So when she sleeps after this, she stays asleep all night?”
“Yeah, until 6:15 in the morning when we have to wake her up before we go to work,” Mr. W said.
“Wow,” my dad said.
On the way back from the park, my mom said to Allie, “Sleep like a good girl, okay? Hope you can sleep aaaaall night!” I had no doubt at the time that she’d sleep all night through. It’s the one thing I can count on these days, given how her naps have been. But I started feeling nervous, now that it was brought up. I didn’t know how to handle if she started waking up in the middle of the night. Back in the day, I would just go in and feed her because that’s likely the reason she was up crying, the rare times she was. Now, I know she can sleep the whole way through (with natural awakenings, of course, after which she puts herself back to sleep without making noise). But I’d heard a few people say that babies stop sleeping through around this age and would wake and cry. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when that happens. Do I do the sleep training thing and just not respond so she’s given an opportunity to learn to self-soothe through those periods again? I know she’s vulnerable at this age, due to her growing memory and her ability to make mental connections, to developing a night-waking habit once she realizes she’s able to get someone to respond to her calling. But I can’t just not respond if she’s actually wailing for long periods of time. How much time do I let her cry? 🙁
Back at home for the night after my parents had left, Allie went to bed easily, nursing to sleep quickly. But suddenly, a few hours later at 9:30p, I heard her wail. She let out a few more wails, then got quiet again. By the time I was able to force myself through my immobilizing terror and go grab my cell phone so that I could see what was going on thru the baby cams, Allie had moved to the foot of her bed and was sitting up. Mr. W was oblivious, playing his game on the computer with his ear buds plugged in. I showed him the baby cam on my phone, and he cursed. I stood in the living room, frozen, staring at the monitor, reciting over and over in my head, “Lie down and go to sleep. you can do it. Just lay down. Put your thumb in your mouth. Lay down and close your eyes.” At some point I became aware of my hard breathing. And then my sweating. Allie crawled around, pushing down on the crib bumper to look over it. I know that Jayne sometimes ducks down in Allie’s room after putting her down and Allie’s caught her there before and laughed, suddenly finding herself in a game of peek-a-boo, so maybe Allie’s checking to see if someone’s there for her hidden behind the bumper. It probably wasn’t more than minutes before Allie settled on a position she liked, sucked her thumb, and went back to sleep. But it felt like hours. Overnight, I was awoken by what I thought was Allie’s wail, something that hasn’t happened in awhile. My head saying, “Please be an auditory hallucination, please be an auditory hallucination,” I checked my cell phone for the baby monitors. Allie was asleep, and I was relieved and exhausted. I’m not sure if I’m truly getting auditory hallucinations in my sleep, but it’s shocking how much random noises sound like a muffled baby wail — screeching car brakes, cats, drunk people far away, garbage trucks.

I’m hoping this is just a very, very short developmental thing. =P