History may be hard to predict, but babies are even harder! We've been working on getting Sophie and Olivia, the twin girls I take care of during the day, into a regular nap routine. Needless to say, this is easier thought about than done and so far we've only had one or two days where they've both taken early afternoon naps. Most of the time we've been all over the place. Some days they go right back to bed after breakfast, others they fall asleep during the morning walk, and yesterday I finally had to leave Sophie in her crib around noon to cry herself to sleep 'cause she had been acting really tired for four plus hours, but refused to sleep. (That, btw, was really hard. I have trouble leaving them to cry at all, much less for more than a couple of minutes.)
Something I really enjoy about the process of instituting this nap time, however, and nannying generally is what a good lesson in flexibility it is. I like my life to be scheduled out, but life simply isn't that way and the girls remind me daily of my need to just roll with the punches and enjoy the moment instead of thinking about the past and planning out the future. So, as a dear friend of mine who's now a nun used to say, "Onward!" I hear one of the girls now, so I'm off!
Since posting this we've changed tack slightly and the girls have settled into taking morning and afternoon naps. We're not at 100% compliance yet ;-), but we're not expecting it either. We've had days where our normal schedule has been thrown out of wack by church or a trip to the doctor's office, but all in all having two naps seems to be working well for them. It's definitely working well for me :-). It gives me a couple of breaks during the day and that helps me maintain a more even keel the rest of the day...
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