Saturday 9 February 2013

Swedish shopping and nap time

We all went to IKEA this afternoon, and Jack-Jack slept in the buggy all the way round and then tried his first swedish meatballs for dinner which were a hit. Amongst many other things, (and despite only intending to buy clippits and sandwich bags,) we bought a play tunnel and set it up when we got home. We weren't expecting him to be interested at all yet, but he absolutely loved it and crawled straight in! He experimented with going forwards and backwards and turning round, and then lay down and rocked the tunnel from side to side, all the time making his "ah-ba" happy noises and kicking his legs.

We recently bought the book "No-cry nap solution" by Elizabeth Pantley, and it's completely revolutionised the way we handle Jack-Jack's naps. Jack-Jack didn't have a problem getting to sleep in the day, but he always woke after about 35 minutes, crying and irritable. I haven't even finished reading the whole book yet, but the way she explains how babies' sleep cycles work really made an impact. We realised that Jack-Jack was only sleeping for one sleep cycle at a time (about 35-40 minutes), and if we left him to settle for a few minutes rather than rushing to him at the first sound, he would usually resettle into another sleep cycle! Naps are now generally about 1-1.5 hours, and it's made such a difference, not only to his daytime sleep but also night time, and he's waking happy and chatty rather than out of sorts! In hindsight we were probably waking him when we rushed to get him as babies can make all sorts of sounds and movements between sleep cycles, so no wonder he was grumpy. Hopefully the rest of the book will be as useful, and whilst he's sleeping I'll have time to read it!

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