Sleeping babies are the sweetest - why won't mine sleep?

This morning started out relatively well, after dropping the Big Kid off at school, the Little and I came home and had a nap together. The only problem was he was awake and ready to play after an hour and I could have slept for another 2 hours easily!

We have finally had a turn around in the weather lately, with some beautiful warm days - but mostly they've been days I had to work. Luckily today we were blessed with a whole heap of sunshine and warm breezes so it was off across the road to the beach for us after lunch.


He had an absolute ball, trying to catch butterflies, chasing magpies and looking for sheep (don't ask, I don't get it either). It reminded me again why I chose to do this mostly-stay-at-home-parenting-thing.

Unfortunately though, as the day wore on...it became not quite as lovely. We are in the middle of trying to turn around the wee Beastie's sleep patterns, and I tell you what...it ain't easy.

For the last few months, we've been woken by the delicate kicking and bashing of the boys' bedroom door at about midnight-1am, followed by a small but very wiggly 2 year old joining us in bed. Which wouldn't be so much of a problem if he went to sleep and/or lay still.

But noooo, little guy likes to kick off the covers (from all of us), turn himself upside down, sideways, any which way really. He wiggles and squirms, and then demands cereal at about 4am. Enough was enough.

The only thing we could think of was to drop from two naps a day (or one loooong nap) to one nap lasting no more than 90 minutes.

Fun and games....until the evening. By about 6pm he is vile. The high pitched squeals over nothing, the tantrums, the tears...it's all just too much for this mama. I was beside myself, he was beside himself, we were all cranky and we decided we just couldn't do it.

Until...that first trial night...he slept through. Until SEVEN FIFTEEN AM. Which has never happened. Ever. He is a 5:30am boy (as is my big boy - lord knows where they got that charming trait - certainly not from me, I am so not a morning person).

Which of course means the whole house had a good night's sleep and we had to at least trial it another day to see whether it was a fluke or not. Unfortunately (or fortunately, whichever way you want to look at it) he slept through. Again.

So now we just have to ride it out as he progressively becomes the devil as the day wears on...and hope like mad that he eventually transitions away from needing those two naps, to being totally ok with just the one (oh please oh please oh please)...