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@Sammyfab: Whether she takes the third nap on the weekend depends on how long her midday nap goes. If she finishes up around 2pm or 2.30pm I can usually stretch her out and put her down early. The problem is during the week she'll generally refuse a third nap at daycare because she's distracted and then fall asleep in the car, which can mean she's finishing her third nap as late as 6.15pm depending on traffic.

I feel like I'm limited in what I can do to get her on a good schedule because the commute to daycare messes with her naps. She usually naps on the way in as well, so she has a super short morning car nap, a long midday nap and then falls asleep coming home.

It mainly bothers me because I think the wonky napping is making her night sleep really unpredictable. Her bedtime is normally pretty predictable, but if she's napped too close to bedtime, she gets up super early. I don't know why. Sleep does not beget sleep in our house.

*sigh* Sorry for the novel.

@Sammyfab: Weekends we go by maximum wake times rather than the clock because her wake-up time is variable. We put her down after ~3 hours wake time. A usual weekend day will be:

5(ugh) to 6am wake up

8 to 9am - put down for first nap. She usually naps for between 45 mins and an hour

11 to 12 - put her down for her second nap which last 1hr 15 to 2hr.

If she takes a third nap its around 4/4.30. The last few weeks we've been heading out after her second nap to try to keep her distracted and the majority of the time she'll fall asleep in the Beco or in her car seat if she's in either anywhere between 3.30pm and 5pm.

Bedtime is 7pm. Slightly earlier if she naps poorly or doesn't take the third nap.

By the time she gets picked up from daycare she's been awake for 3 or 4 hours. She's on a very similar schedule at daycare, except that nap one often happens in the car and is short. And nap three happens in the car at 5pm.

Daycare has been really great about working with us to get her on a schedule, but they've had very little luck getting her to nap at the same time as the other babies, so we're all still doing a very loose routine following her lead.

Honestly, I don't know if there's anything I can or should do about the situation. Its just really difficult to make any plans around her crazy lack-of-a-schedule on the weekends, and her unpredictable night sleep is starting to take a toll, especially as she's not consistently sleeping through yet.

@Sammyfab: She sure does love motion sleep! We've been vigilant about having her take the majority of naps in her crib, and she does really well sleeping in it. But if she gets a whiff of a car or carrier within half an hour of naptime she falls asleep. Her dad is exactly the same. He'll fall asleep on my shoulder on a ten minute bus ride.

She's okay at night unless she's sick. Or teething. Or working on a milestone. Puts herself to sleep every night after going into her crib wide awake. Sleeps through about half the time or wakes up once to nurse and then goes back down. (I'm still nursing at night because she's tiny and its been a struggle to get her to gain weight, so I assume she's hungry as she -can- sleep through.) So, I guess I may be stuck with three naps until she puts on a bit more weight.

Thanks for talking through it with me. I really appreciate the suggestions.

@Sammyfab: I'll try pushing her wake time on the weekend. I know during the week she won't go down for a nap at daycare in the morning if she's had anything more than about 15 minutes sleep in the car, so I'm not sure how that's going to effect things.

I was also thinking that I could get some kind of toy - a mirror or a toy arch - to try to distract her in the car to see if that will help keep her awake.