To Nap

Yesterday Jasper insisted on napping... in Josie's crib. He put himself to sleep and was out in a matter of minutes. He woke up happy and had a great afternoon. But then, a painful bedtime. So today I decided to experiment with skipping nap altogether. We had an extended quiet time of books and lying in his room, but when he was still resisting sleep at 2 pm, I decided to go with it. It was a long afternoon. Every five minutes I checked the clock to see how much longer we needed to survive. At around 3 pm he started head butting everything. His body turned into limp spaghetti and he would alternately giggle or growl when spoken to. I tried feeding him sugar, protein, water. He rolled on the floor and looked like he had finished off the bottle of wine from dinner. Finally, when Josie woke up from her nap, I force clothed everyone and we set out to explore the neighborhood on foot. The temperature was about 12 degrees with the wind chill. We played mountain climbers over the unplowed sidewalks. We visited his friends Patrick and Ian and tried on their spiderman costumes. By 4:30 Jasper was practically speaking in tongues, but he had managed not to piss me off. I had to carry him home on my back (Josie, this time wide awake, in the Bjorn) while he moaned about being hungy and not wanting anything to eat. When we got home, he collapsed on a pile of ice in the driveway and refused to come inside. He finally let me carry him in when a jet plane scared him ("what's that growling?"). Miraculously, he pulled himself together for a good supper, a delightful bath, and a prompt bedtime at 7:30 when he passed out while Peter read Chicken Sunday. Boom. Asleep.

So the question is, what works better for Jasper? A good long night's sleep (if that indeed happens) and a cranky afternoon, or a happy few hours at dinner time and insomnia? What works best for us? I wish there were an obvoius natural rythm to be detected and followed intuitively.

Jasper cried hysterically when I left him at school this morning. He then proceeded to have a great productive day. Go figure.