Shouldn't I have this figured out by now?

After more than two years, you would think I'd have this nap thing down cold. But Jack's nap schedule continues to be a major source of frustration. The past couple of weeks, he has been really fighting his naps, but I know he isn't ready to skip them altogether. The couple of times we made that mistake, he had night terrors, which are terrifying.

When Jack is at his best, we do our little naptime routine of songs and stories, then I'll lay down with him on our bed, and he drifts off to sleep.

However, this has been the pattern recently: We try to put Jack down for his nap; he resists; after at least a half hour (but often more) of trying to get him to go down easy, we leave him in his crib where he screams like he's being tortured; he falls asleep 5-10 minutes later; he wakes up 30-45 minutes later; we move him to our bed; he sleeps for another hour or so (but sometimes he doesn't at all!).

It is a nightmare.

First of all, this interrupted naptime means that I don't really have a big enough chunk of time to do anything constructive. I'm constantly on tenterhooks that he's going to wake up and feel like I can't start any projects, because they're just going to get interrupted.

The other thing is I feel like Jack is playing chicken with us, daring us to make him cry it out because he knows how much we hate it. It's especially heart-wrenching now that he can talk. Today he screamed, "No crib! No crib!" when I finally put him in there. This was at 3:30, and he had been awake for 8 hours straight. He woke up 45 minutes later, I moved him to our bed, and at 5:15 he was still asleep and would not wake up.

Did I say, "Nightmare"?

Of course, he didn't go to bed until 9:30, which, all things considered, is pretty good but still much later than he should have been asleep.

And tomorrow the cycle begins again.