Since TG has altered her sleep routine, I knew Daylight Savings was going to be brutal and it has been.
Essentially, TG now naps later, except on occasion with me when she prefers to nap at noon. On average she naps around 2pm which means that she's not ready physically for bed until past her usual 7:30pm bedtime.
I can deal with 8. I can deal with 9 to some extent but tonight she didn't fall asleep until well past 10pm!
Again, I'm starting her routine as usual. It's what she likes best but now we're laying in the dark and she's reciting sounds and words and songs again. I try my best to be quiet and lay there waiting for her to pass out again but sometimes it seems like I'll pass out before she will.
I also know that if I don't start our bedtime routine of dim lights and slowing things down around 7:30, the kid goes bonkers.
As it is already, she's got the best internal clock I've seen since my maternal grandfather. At playdates, as soon as it hits 6:30, the kid says, "Clean up!" and starts to put away whatever she's doing and then takes me to the door to go home. Yes, don't hate me but my kid takes after me. Even at home, after dinner and right before bedtime, when I tell her we need to get ready to go to bed, she starts to clean up.
Today she helped me put away the playdough and clear her table and push her chairs back. Then she grabbed her lovey and then said goodnight to DH and then shuffled to the bathroom to brush her teeth.
God, I hope this isn't a phase.
Anyway, our daily bedtime routine goes without change but instead of falling asleep during our lullabies she's now getting up and saying every vocabulary word in her ever growing dictionary.
I'm trying to be patient as I recalled she did this at the very beginning of speech. I think it's the brain's way of recapping, recalling and learning new words and pronunciations.
I have a theory that at the end of the day, as we're settling in bed, the brain of a toddler sort of does a back up of what they have learned. Some things they comprehend are recalled and stored in long term memory. Other things that are fresh, new or more complex cycle through and may even lead to expanded deciphering during their sleep.
This is the only reason why I have no problem with TG, bringing me non-bedtime books to read at night or going through alphabets, numbers and concepts with her as we lay in bed. Right now her two favorite books to read in bed, regardless of time of day are an Opposites book and a descriptor book (things that are soft, things that are tall, etc).
Any time of day means, when I am home, TG on a daily bases outside of naptimes and bedtimes, takes me to her bed and gives me 1 or 2 books to read. As we read them, she reviews certain concepts and then asks to nurse.
We used to do this in her reading chair but now she solely does this in bed. Her favorite concepts to date are: Quiet/Noisy, Left/Right, Above/Below, Fuzzy/Rough/Soft/Smooth. I'm not sure she gets the concepts as much as enjoys looking at the pictures and describing them to me but I'm not expecting a 20 month too.
Just as the nursing nowadays is more comforting and downtime related, I think it also serves as a rebooter for her cognitive development. Why else has her primary request for nursing during the day been after complex concepts?
Still having a bedtime routine start at 8 and end at 11 takes a toll. I'm hoping that as the week progresses and we acclimate to DST and the illnesses run their course, we'll get back to a more reasonable sleep time. Until then, I try to remain patient and listen to the cues TG gives me.
