Late nights, late mornings - redressing the balance

Every night was a late night last week in Italy. Girls did ok with this, and in the morning no-one woke much before 8am. Same thing happened when we were in Majorca.

But the fall out when you get home is a bit hard. We expect them to go to bed between 7.30pm and 8pm, which they do, but the getting to sleep part is impossible before 9 - 9.30pm. This morning Lily woke at 8am, so I went in and woke Charlotte up as well by opening the shutters. She complained - 'close the blinds', 'I want to sleep' - but once she got up she was alright.

But school and garderie start tomorrow so we have to get back into those hours. Which means going to sleep at a decent time. Hopefully it'll happen tonight.

We didn't put Charlotte down for a nap today to help things along tonight. In fact, naps have been fairly haphazard for a while now. And that crucial test of whether a nap is helping or hurting - does an afternoon nap negatively affect the nighttime sleeping? It looks like the answer may be yes for Charlotte. But this is a kid who just never needed as much sleep as Lily, the Sleeping Queen. Charlotte will and does nap, but I know she can survive without one.

Once upon a time, if Charlotte didn't nap in the afternoon she'd be asleep within 5 minutes of putting her down at night. Now she can be like the Everready Bunny...just keeps going and going. That's scary.