New Sleep Habits

We have been VERY blessed to have a son with great sleep habits. Let me rephrase that: He has had great sleep habits since he was about 10 weeks old. He did go through the newborn weeks-from-hell, but easily adjusted into the Baby Wise plan, then later into the Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child plan.

He has been sleeping 12 hours a night since he was 6 months old, and now at 18 months, I'm feeling that he's getting to the stage where he's going to need less sleep at night. His doctor told us at his 15 month check-up, and again at his 18 month check-up, that he'll start sleeping less.

I expected a gradual change, easing into a later bedtime, maybe even taking a shorter nap, but that obviously isn't how Clark wants this to go down.

Over the last 3 or 4 days, he has decided that he doesn't want to nap until mid-afternoon, then wants to go to sleep 2 hours later than usual.

Yesterday, I tried from 12:15 to 1:30 to get him to nap. At that point, I gave up, and we headed outside to play. I put him in his high chair around 4 for a snack, and he immediately fell asleep. Knowing that it was too late for a long nap (unless I wanted him up half the night), we let him sleep for about 30 minutes, then got him up.

I'm not complaining AT ALL, because I know we have been very lucky with a child who loves to sleep, but I'm still dreading this change!