Where have you been all my life?!

I think it has been fairly well documented on this blog that Lucy is not the best sleeper in the world. But her sleeping, both at nighttime and nap time had actually been fairly good lately. Ever since she went to one nap (14-15 months, I think - how could I forget already, it wasn't that long ago?) she was pretty consistent. Lunch, potty, two stories, nurse for 2 minutes, out for 2 hours. It was grand. I could get up and do stuff but she was more likely to wake early and honestly, I liked having the excuse to nap/read/surf on the kindle snuggled next to her anyway.

Bedtime took longer as she takes a while to wind down, about 20-30 minutes once the lights are off she was still consistent and was only waking up once or sometimes twice and was fine starting on her own bed and eventually in her own room.

Until daylight savings that is...I knew it was coming and we struggled last year as well so I tried to preemptively adjust her and hoped for the best. But it started taking longer and longer to put her to bed. We are talking 75-90 minutes to fall asleep and that isn't counting prep time (stories, prayer, etc). Then her naps began to be effected as well. She was so sleepy from staying up late the night before that she would start to fall asleep between 10-11 but only take a short nap or would be overly tired by her real nap time and still not take a good nap. In both situations I was left dealing with a tired cranky toddler all afternoon - who still wouldn't go to bed easily!

My supply decreased quite a bit around 7-8 weeks but last week, and what I had left pretty much up and left me this past week. I know that is common in the 4th-5th month of pregnancy and was expecting it but Lucy was not. Her nap is the one of the two times she really still consistently wants to nurse during the day (the other being first thing in the morning; she only nurses about 75% of bedtimes for 2-3 minutes before asking for a song or a backrub and maybe once or twice sporadically throughout the day if she gets hurt or scared or something like that). Between the schedule wonkiness and the lack of milk, she just decided she was done with the whole nap thing. I could fight her for 1.5 hours and she might sleep for 20 minutes - or she might not. It was a long week.

So I finally got off my bum and did something we've been meaning to do for a while - put up black out curtains. Actually, I was so desperate that I didn't want to wait to go buy anything so I found two dark navy curtains we weren't using and double hung them over her old curtains. Low and behold, the nap she took later that day went so much better. As in, she took one! And it only took her about 15 minutes to fall asleep. She nursed for a few minutes first but then slept, with no back rub, no songs, no help from me at all (I was already pretending to be asleep*).

That night, it only took her 30 minutes to fall asleep. And the last two days have been pretty similar, but yesterday's nap was back to around the 2-5 minutes to fall asleep mark! Of course, it could be a coincidence, but I'm not willing to take down these suckers down. At least not until I have a acceptable alternative. And I am looking since this is not really the look I am going for in my attempt to finish her room decor.

And it is pretty precarious and leaves me unable to open it and let in the nice sunshine when we are playing in there.

Now how to remedy that look. I have several options:

1) We were already planning on replacing the mini-blinds with plantation shutters slowly so I might bump her room to the top of the list and see how much that works. It it does, I could keep her cute valence (seen here)

2) Find a new fabric that I love as much as that red print to make a curtain that fully covers her window and line it with blackout fabric. In this case, I would have enough leftover red fabric to make a matching valence and could use the two valences in the kitchen .(I think they would work but they might seem to "Mary Englebreit-ish" in that space. Not that I dislike M.E., I'm just not sure that is the look I'm going for there)

3) Use the small amount of red fabric I have left to embellish solid colored store bought curtains that I add blackout fabric to.

But the real question is, why the heck do curtains have to be so complicated?!

*Pretending to be asleep is my mechanism when she refused to sleep. I rest next to her while she tosses around for an hour then I allow her to sit up and read quietly for a few more minutes. I don't get any sleep but at least I can lay down for a while. It doesn't work in the morning though because someone (I'm glaring at you, Craig) thought it would be cute to teach her to say "Up" and tap your shoulder to wake you up. It is cute at 4pm when you are pretend sleeping on the living room floor. It is not cute at 6am when you are really sleeping. But now she knows she has to play "quietly" until daddy's phone goes "Beep, beep." If only her idea of quiet and my idea of quiet were the same.