One Nap, Two Nap, No Nap...Please Nap?

He had me fooled. I thought that Eamon Wolfe (my child; see every other blog post) knew what he was doing. He seemed pretty competent and reliable about this whole "being a small child" thing.

If the books and the milestone charts said that he should be sitting up around 5 months, he sat up around 5 months. He was never early, and rarely late. If the books said to crawl around 7 months, he showed zero proclivity to do so until 7 months on the dot. We excused him on the talking aspect, though, because of the tongue-tie thing, and he is doing his best to make up ground on that particular aspect.

But now we've found something else, another area in which Eamon has obviously not done any research because he's doing it all wrong: napping.

Eamon? Has anyone seen Eamon? Where are you, Eamon?!

First of all, he's running late. Most books say that around 18 months most kids will start to go from two naps to one nap. Well, 18 months came and went and Eamon just kind of ignored that particular milestone. We briefly attempted it one weekend, during which he was a cranky, irritable, whiny mess. After a quick conference with all concerned, we came to consensus that we would let Eamon take the lead on this one and let us know when he was ready for just one nap a day.

So 18 months became 19, which rolled into 20, which stretched into 21, which meandered into 22, which is where we are now. And Eamon is finally, finally, starting to edge towards only 1 nap a day.

But here's the problem: IT'S THE WRONG NAP.

WAIT! What's that in the curtains? Is that...a little boy?!

See, according to "the experts" (good for them, they published a book), the kid is supposed to give up the MORNING NAP, and then move towards 1 MIDDLE OF THE DAY NAP. But Eamon? He is confused, and is instead trying to still take his morning nap from 9-11ish, and then wants to give up the afternoon nap. This means that he is trying to stay up from 11-7, and folks, quite frankly, my perfect fabulous little munchkin of joy and happiness disappears somewhere around hour 5 1/2 and becomes the evil gnome of doom and misery and cranky-pantsedness.

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And yes, we've discussed the idea of putting him down earlier around 6...but then he sleeps for 11 hours and is up around 5AM, and that is NOT A VIABLE OPTION.

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I have sat Eamon down. I have had this discussion. I've attempted to show him charts and graphs explaining why we cannot keep the morning nap as it is and just give up our afternoon nap, but it's not getting through to him. When I ask him whether he understands, I usually just get answers like "SHOCKS!" as he attempts to take off his socks, or "DOH!" because he wants to open the door and go outside. It almost makes me think that he's not even paying attention.

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I'm not really sure what to do here. I get that he's inexperienced at the whole "life" thing, but he's not taking any of my suggestions seriously on this one. I think I am going to have to put him on a Plan of Action, and that this might just be one of those dilemmas that we have to work on consisently over the course of many weeks or, Lord help us, many months to solve. I have every confidence that, as a team, we can all work through it together and find a solution and suits everyone's needs.

There you are, Eamon! By the way, don't forget that your Annual Performance Review is coming up in December.