Hellobee Boards

- Naps: Xander didn't transition to one nap until around 18 months. If your son isn't ready, I wouldn't push it, unless you're okay with him just going to bed super early every night. When my kids weren't ready for the transition, but were getting one nap at daycare, they were in bed by 5:30 every night. And until they really were on one nap a day, their other naps were a lot shorter. It all sounds normal to me!

- Cooking: No advice here really. We make the same things over and over again: Burgers and fries, Spaghetti w/ meat sauce (using the leftover beef), Steak and egg noodles, Spaghetti w/ meat sauce (using the leftover steak), Chicken burgers (frozen patties), BBQ Chicken & Sweet Potatoes. I only do fancier cooking if I get home from work early and have the extra time.

- Colds: Yep. It's winter. No advice, but we're right there with you.

I feel you on the colds. DD (14 mo) has been sick back to back to back. She's finally recovered from RSV, now I'm kinda holding my breath for the next thing. And meanwhile I caught the cold from her and just can't shake it!

I'm kinda struggling with the 2 nap thing too. She has taken 1 naps, but they're not long enough and she either had to have a late afternoon nap that pushes back bed time, or I have to just deal with crankiness for a little bit. So as best as I can, I still push for AM nap. She will only nap for like half an hour, but at least that sets up for a nice normal-ish afternoon nap.

So conclusion is, I feel ya!! I have no motivation during this awful winter!

The one nap transition is hard!! Don't worry about it! My son transitioned to 1 nap at 14 months, but it was like 3 months of tweaking and tinkering and the transition itself was definitely the worst part. My son is on a 730-730 schedule and the last set of naps before the transition was literally a 30-40 minute catnap in the morning (like 1030am) after a good romp in the park for about an hour in the morning to burn some energy. Not gonna lie, he would be PISSED because we woke him from that morning nap, but it was the only way he could make it to a PM nap and be tired enough for it. We had it timed to the point where a 45 minute nap was too long (he'd fight the PM nap), but 40 minutes was okay! He would be grouchy for a while, but then we'd have lunch which would be sort of an distraction, and then he'd go down around 230pm and we'd hope for a solid 2 hour nap. That would give him 3.5 hours until bedtime.

When he started fighting the PM nap on a 30 minute catnap at 14 months, I knew it was time for 1 nap, so we just distracted him with a snack at 1030am, put him down for the one nap at 11am and let him sleep as long as he wanted. Lunch would follow afterwards (hence the snack). At first he only wanted to sleep 90 minutes to 2 hours because it takes them some time to consolidate and extend that nap, which meant lots of crankiness in the evenings, but we did a second round at the park in the afternoon (which he loves), earlier dinner (like at 430pm before he was at meltdown point), longer baths (which he loves) and then a slightly earlier bedtime (we'd try to make it to 7pm).

By 15 months, he was able to go to sleep between 12pm after an earlier lunch at 1130am. We had 2 weeks of waking after 90 minutes because he'd be pooping mid-nap, but his body figured it out. By 16 months when he started daycare, he could make it until their 12:30pm naptime. Now he's 17 months and at daycare they put him down between 1230-1pm and he naps about 2 hours. At home we still put him down around 12pm and he sleeps till 230-3pm (sleeps way better at home obviously). And he's able to stay up a little later for naps or make it to his regular bedtime without completely losing it even if he took a crap nap that day.

As for food, focus on meal prep for your son. My freezer is full of organic meatballs, chicken apple sausage, chicken nuggets, peas, corn, peas & carrots, and frozen pancakes and waffles. I keep eggs, hot dog weiners, yogurt, cheese, a jug of milk, and some kind of cooked rice or pasta in the fridge. I try to keep 2-3 easy prep fruits and veggies on hand (bananas, clementines, berries, persian cucumbers, baby carrots). Bread, tortillas, PB, jam, cheerios, and maple syrup in the pantry. With these always on hand, I can have any meal on the table for my son in under 5 minutes. Sure, if I have time to cook something for all of us or something with more variety, that's wonderful, but it takes a lot of stress off me to know that DS has a semi-balanced meal no matter what.

For me and DH's dinners, I focus on cooking 3 times a week with enough leftovers for another meal. I pick 3 things that are pretty easy (i.e. something one-pot that I can throw a frozen veg, a bag salad, or a bread on the side with). That covers 6 dinners. I try to cook something after DS has gone to bed and then reheat whatever that is the NEXT night so its already cooked. If I don't have the energy to cook at night, then I know someone has to pick something up on the way home. Crockpotting overnight counts too! Just dump the cooked food into your fridge in the morning and reheat it at night. We do this for pork butts all the time and can get pulled pork BBQ sandwiches and carnitas tacos/burritos out of one pot and enough for the freezer for another day. As an example, this week we had Greek pitas (I cooked little spiced ground beef patties, slapped them on pita bread with storebought hummus, yogurt, and chopped lettuce, cukes, and tomatoes), Skyline chili coneys (hot dog buns, hot dogs, and a ground beef chili recipe that required nothing but beef, a bunch of dry spices, and a can of tomato sauce), and Japanese curry (a package of curry seasoning with chopped baby carrots, an onion, a potato, water, and 3 thin cut pork chops cubed up over brown rice my rice cooker handled for me overnight).

And the illness thing. Yeah. No thoughts except commiseration. We have (all three of us) been wall to wall sick since before Christmas when DS started transitional playdates for daycare. We have been showering with DS a lot so he gets a lot of good steaming and have been giving him a small plastic cup while we're in there with warm water to "practice drinking out of a cup," which he finds super fun, but really its to help him loosen up the gunk in his chest and sinuses. We can't get him to drink anything warm otherwise! We've all been eating clementines nonstop for the vitamin C. We wash his face and hands ALL the time and carry sensitive Wet Ones or hand sanitizer everywhere. We run his humidifier all the time, Nose Frida him with saline solution the morning and evening, and use the Zarbees cough/mucus syrup morning and night to help him work out all the crud in his system.

@junebugsmama: I don't have any advice on naps, but I just wanted to commiserate on food prep because my DD is over 2 now and I still don't really have it down. I've found things go most smoothly when I prep dinner the night before so I don't have to do much when I get home from work. Casseroles are great because you can just take the pan out of the fridge, pop it in the oven, and 20-30 minutes later, dinner is ready. Crockpot meals are great, too -- I get everything ready, stick it in the fridge overnight, and in the morning just dump the whole thing into the crock. When we get home, dinner is ready except for quickly boiling up some noodles or rice or whatever. If I'm making something like baked fish or chicken breasts, I try to put all the seasonings on and put them in the pan the night before, so again I can just stick it straight in the oven when I get home. Same for chopping/prepping veggies (we also eat a lot of frozen veg heated up in the microwave).

Sometimes it REALLY sucks to be prepping food at 9:30/10 at night, but it's so much better than trying to do it when we get home and DD is clingy, hungry, and getting tired. On nights when I haven't prepped ahead, I inevitably regret it.

ETA: haha, looks like others beat me to the punch mentioning this! Serves me right for being a slow typer.

@junebugsmama: I was reaaaally bothered about it for a while too... I have no idea what made/helped me ease up more now. I think it's because she suddenly passed her "I must be awake for at least 5 hrs before bed time" to going to bed pretty much the same time no matter what she slept till. It used to be that if she slept till 4:30pm we're not going to bed till earliest 9pm and that was rough bc we couldn't get anything done. But now she seems sleep by 8:30pm no matter what so it got easier.

My motto with her it's just that everything is a phase and this too shall pass!

Oh and she fell down a few steps last week b/c I left the gate open for a second. So trust me when I say, I totally understand the mom fail moment. I couldn't even describe the guilt I felt (she was/is totally fine).

@brownepiano: Ditto on the help me cook at that age. I'm pretty sure that's when we started using our learning tower and that helped a lot! He also typically snacks while he helps.