Tag Archives: naps

Eleanor’s New School

May
25

Posted by: Maggie

This month Eleanor started at a new daycare.  We made the switch for a few reasons and are really happy that we did.

First, I’ve been so busy with work that I need Eleanor in daycare full days rather than half days. And the full time program at her old daycare was a lot more expensive than their half day program. That wouldn’t be a problem if we were completely happy there. But we weren’t.

A few months ago Eleanor’s teacher left the school. We had loved her and weren’t totally thrilled with her replacement, who was supposed to be temporary but had still not been replaced after more than a month.  The new teacher wasn’t terrible or anything I just didn’t have a great feeling about her. I don’t think she was the right teacher for Eleanor.

Eleanor had started crying and asking me to stay when I dropped her off in the morning. She had never really done that before. I think that was partly due to her general crankiness from all the sleep problems she was having, but I think that she also just wasn’t enjoying school as much as she had before. She never talked about her new teacher. Never even mentioned her name. This was odd because she talked about the 3s teacher who was in her classroom when she arrived every morning, the assistant director who drops in on all the classrooms throughout the day, and even the school cook who brought her breakfast and lunch. But she never mentioned her teacher. Kinda weird, right?

So when I started getting really busy and realized that I needed full time daycare, we thought it was a good opportunity to check out some other schools. We settled on the one that had been our second choice when we had originally looked at daycares. We really like Eleanor’s new teacher. And I love that instead of having classrooms solely based on age like her old school (infants, toddlers, 2s, 3s) the new school bases it more on developmental stage and switch classes based on the school year and not by birthday. So her group of 2 year old toddlers are all together and will stay together until they go to Kindergarten. They will all switch from their room to a preschool room in June for the summer program and stay into the fall and rest of the year, and their teacher will go with them. At the old school the kids changed classes after their birthday so there were always kids coming in and out of each class. Here, unless one leaves the school or new ones come in, Eleanor will stay with the same group of kids as long as she is there. And it’s about $70 a week less expensive than her old school would have been.

Although, we knew that it was the right thing to do to switch schools, we were concerned about how she would handle the transition. Especially because she’s never napped at school and has never stayed a full day, but she’s done really well. The first week was a little rocky. We got some reports of her “testing” the teachers a little, taking other kids snacks she wasn’t supposed to have because of her dairy allergy, not participating in activities she didn’t want to do, not napping, but she seems to have settled in and is doing really well. She’s being a little more cooperative, eating her own food, and taking naps every day. The best part is that at the end of the day she doesn’t want to go home. She always wants to stay at school.

The other day she said to Josh, “Daddy, I like my new school. I run that school.” (She’s just like her mommy!) So, I’m pretty sure we made the right decision.

The Honeymoon Is Over

Mar
23

Posted by: Maggie

So, remember when we moved Eleanor into her new toddler bed? At the time I wrote about how she was doing a great job and going right to bed without getting up and that we thought it was funny that she wouldn’t leave her room after she woke up in the morning until we came to get her. Well, the honeymoon is over!

Just as my mom friends predicted, the novelty of the big girl bed has worn off. She now walks right out to find us when she gets up in the morning or after a nap and getting her to sleep is not going so great! Saturday night she just did not want to go to bed. We walked her back to bed every 3-5 minutes for about 4-and-a-half hours. We finally got to sleep around 1am! And guess who decided that she’d wake up super early the next day! Yup, that little Monster (don’t worry she takes that as a compliment, Monsters, Inc. is her very favorite movie right now) got us up at 6am the next day! So we were all running on about 5 hours of sleep on Sunday.

She also wouldn’t nap on Sunday. After putting her back in bed for about an hour, she finally stayed there. But she came out only an hour later (she always naps for at least two hours) looking very tired, which led us to believe that she hadn’t napped at all. We didn’t have too much trouble putting her to bed that night. We only had to put her back in bed 5 times before she finally stayed there. I assume she was as exhausted as we were from the lack of sleep the night before and no nap that day!

Today (Monday) she only got out of bed twice at nap time. But as I write this I’ve been putting her back into bed for the last hour and a half. I think she’s finally gone to sleep though. It’s been about 20 minutes since she last got up. I think that I did a better job tonight than we did the first night. We know that the trick is to consistently and dispassionately walk your darling Monster back to bed without saying a word or making eye contact. It’s pretty tough when you have to keep it up for four hours! We did not do a great job that first night. We mostly did what we were supposed to but sometimes we listened and responded to her complaints because she is a little sick and we felt bad about that, although I don’t really think that was what was keeping her up. And we were also exhausted and I was feeling pretty sick myself and just did not have the energy or patience necessary.

Tonight I did a much better job and walked her back without a word, over and over again. Although, I did have to interact with her a little when at one trip back to bed she showed me that she had taken her diaper off and put it in the hamper. But she’s finally asleep (I hope)!

My favorite baby sleep book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, claims that it should take about 3-4 nights of silently walking them back to bed to solve the problem. To that I say, “you have obviously not met Eleanor, who has the endurance of a triathlete and the stubbornness of her mother (super, super stubborn).”

So wish us more sleep this week than we got this weekend!