...waking up crying & naps

(I know I've been calling the baby "Lia," but it doesn't seem to be catching on, so I'm going back to "Julia" and reserving Lia as a nuclear family nickname to keep things less confusing for her.)

So Julia's been waking up crying from many of her naps, particularly those in the afternoon/evening. The internet tells me it could be many things (thanks, Helpful Internet!) but that it is likely because she's not done sleeping yet, which was my hunch anyways. She only naps for 20-30 minutes at a time, so I'm guessing that's how long her sleep cycle is right now, and she needs to nap for more than one of them but is waking up instead. And while she's getting better at self-soothing and putting herself to sleep, she can really only do it in the mornings and she gets worse at it as the day goes on. So, I've started to step in and try to soothe her back to sleep in the afternoons and evenings, which is incredibly boring and time-consuming but it does seem to be working. (I have definitely not mastered the arms-to-crib transfer because I wake her up every freaking time.) But, she'll almost always go back to sleep for at least another 20-30 minutes, and she's more pleasant in the evenings when I force her to have a longer nap in the afternoon. I guess I need to work on establishing the sleep times, and then work on getting her to be able to put herself to sleep for them. We're just lucky she's the oldest/only child right now. I can't imagine being able to spend all this time rocking her if I had anything else to do!

But we still have yet to have a day where everything goes according to schedule.  I thought we were going to have one yesterday, but then she napped from about 7:00 PM right into her bedtime.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed it doesn't mean she's getting up an hour early this morning because Mommy needs the sleep!

"Well I don't know why you'd put a dog bed in the middle of the doorway either."