I have been wondering how to figure out a napping schedule forever! They have this night routine down pretty good, now, but it's the day time when we need some more stability and a bit of rescuing.
I've posed the question at my New Mom's group and heard that you just find it. Rather vague and un-action oriented advise. One day, the girls will just show you what routine they need. I also written my Mom of Twins group email listserve to see what suggestions they would have since I haven't been "finding" their routine on my own. I desperately want to develop day time napping since I can tell they are overly tired and thus incredibly fussy from noon to about 7pm. I tried the suggestions that came back over the email....which all basically said the same thing: put them down around 9am, noon, and 3pm and see what happens.
Ava and Bettina were happily playing and chattering with me at 9 am the next morning, so it was hard to stop, but I tried it and put them both down in the crib just after 9am. Two sets of eyes stared up at me completely wide awake. I reassured myself that we would try this and walked away convinced I'd have to run back 5 minutes later to their whimpering complaints. Amazingly, within 15 minutes, I had 2 sleeping babies and about 45 minutes of free time!! Elated, I cleaned a load of bottles, put in a load of wash, made the bed and dared to take a shower. Suddenly impressed with myself and my girls, I tried the noon nap as well. Ava napped well after watching ducks dance around her swing. Tina didn't go down as solidly, but did get good quiet time/rest. A 4 o'clock nap also worked well. Why didn't I try this earlier?? This makes having kids so much easier!! You bet I'll try it every day going forward!
The other brilliant benchmark was during their "morning exercises" or, as their grandmother likes to call it, their "boot camp." Just after their nap, when their in a relatively good mood, we practice our "tummy time," which is supposed to build up their neck and back muscles for crawling. Tina doesn't much like tummy time and gets frustrated soon. This week, her frustration motivated her to move around in all the right ways to actually roll over! It came as a big surprise to us. Grandma put her down on her tummy, walked back to the couch, and looked to find she'd already rolled over onto her back. Unsure she did it on her own, we tried it again and watched her roll over a second time all on her own. We will have to be careful where we place her now so she doesn't roll off the furniture. Very exciting progress!!
We are also excited as their 3-month anniversary (can you call it a birthday??) is next week. We have yet to figure out how or if we will do much to celebrate the "big" day. Funny how the months don't match up with the weeks. You'd think that 12 weeks would amount to 3 months, but the months are actually a bit longer. Pretty soon, Tina will be out of her 0-3 month clothes and I'll have to bring some 3-6 mo. clothes out from the garage. I think Ava will still be in them for a bit longer.
