Allie’s cold is significantly better. I didn’t even have to clear her nose the last 2 mornings, and although she still has an occasional phlegmy-sounding cough a few times a day and may need to have her nose cleared after the occasional sneeze, for the most part she’s back to normal.

Except for the napping. By 15 months, more than half of toddlers have eliminated one of their 2 remaining naps, and the one that’s supposed to go is the morning nap. Allie has always fallen asleep faster and often longer for her morning nap. A few random times within the last couple of months or so, she’d skipped an afternoon nap here and there, turning the crib time into a quiet playtime. For the past 2 days in a row, she’d played the entire afternoon naptime in her crib, and although she fell asleep earlier at night, she’d been no different behavior-wise. She may be eliminating it early. In just about everything I read, the babies are supposed to eliminate their morning nap at this point and keep their afternoon nap for the next few years, but Dr. Weissbluth’s “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” gave us a Plan B if she eliminates the 1st nap instead. I’d instructed Jayne to keep doing the regular 2-nap routine for the rest of the week and if Allie consistently turns the 2nd nap into quiet playtime, then Mr. W and I will eliminate the 2nd nap and start moving her morning nap back until it becomes an early afternoon nap. When she goes to preschool and they give age-appropriate naps, it will be in the afternoon, anyway. Mr. W’s dream of having more awake time to DO stuff with Allie may be coming true sooner than expected.

Having a whole morning and most of an evening free with a happy Allie is going to be a lot of fun. We can go to parties (there’s one coming up we were thinking we wouldn’t be able to attend as it’s an hour away), have more leisurely meals out, visit my parents and friends at their homes, or simply discover new things about Allie, which we do constantly. This past weekend, the stepdaughter said, “Go in your house,” and Allie got up and walked into her little pink tent castle that the stepkidlets had gotten her for her birthday, and looked out at us from the sheer window. “Most obedient kid in the world,” I joked. I tell her it’s bath time, naptime, bedtime, dinner time, whatever time it is, and she will drop whatever she’s doing, bounce up, and happily go and wait by the appropriate babygate doorway to go where she needs to go. We’d open the gate, and she’d run to the kitchen, climb up the stairs, wherever it is she’s going. If it’s naptime, she picks up her furry blanket that she naps with first before she goes to wait by the gate. Yesterday, Allie picked up a dropped sock from behind the stepdaughter, who was doing laundry, recognized it as a sock and tried to press it onto her own foot. Later, they were playing in the stepdaughter’s room and I heard a, “Show mom!” Allie came walking carefully out to find me in the kitchen with a floral headband and a matching scarf on. After she stood there for a second so I could exclaim how cute she was, she turned and walked back into the stepkidlet’s bedroom. Later, the stepkidlet said “show mom” was an immediate command she followed without further instruction. Jayne has said that she’d told Allie they were going for a walk, and while she was packing some things Allie showed up holding her shoes. So much fun.