Nap time

It's one of those things us parents get our knickers in a twist about: naps. How many, how long, what time, cot/settee/pram/sling/car...?

My little man was a 30-minute catnapper for months. To the minute. But he would need lots of naps. I remember trying to work out how to fit four naps into the day when he would only fall asleep if he was on the move. Anyway, now he is down to one or two and has actually started sleeping for longer if he is busy enough to stay awake all morning.

Today we spent a rare morning at home while I pottered about tidying up for this afternoon's house viewing. I tried to get him to sleep when he looked tired around 11am by playing the Guess How Much I Love You DVD over and over. He was quite content sitting with me on the settee but showed no sign of dropping off. So I gave up, we had lunch and I then bundled him into the car. Two minutes down the road and he was well away.

He slept through the viewing, which was handy. He woke up when some small child ran past slapping his feet on the pavement very loudly. But little man wasn't happy. He obviously hadn't wanted to wake up. I cuddled him and, miracle of miracles, he went back to sleep. I laid him gently on the settee. Obviously not in the position pictured; he got there all by himself.

I drank my tea, read some more of Last Child in the Woods, closed my eyes for ten minutes, brewed another cup of tea, ate a slice of the Victoria sponge I baked this morning, took a picture of little man, emptied the dishwasher, wrote my blog and stared out of the window at the now pouring rain.

And of course, having worried about getting him to sleep I'm now worried about him sleeping too much. But this 'me time' in the middle of the day is so rare and so unexpected that I think I'm willing to sacrifice the 'me time' later on and push his bedtime back a bit.