Another Napping Update

I know that we’ve been writing a lot about napping recently. It’s just that we’re not quite ready to believe that the girls no longer need naps. They look tired when it’s their nap time, and they’re cranky if they don’t nap, but right after we put them in their cribs, they start talking, and singing, and laughing and they end up not sleeping.

A little over a week ago, we wrote about how the girls took off their clothes instead of napping. The next weekend, we thought we should make sure the girls don’t take off their diapers. There’s just too much additional cleaning to do when they don’t wear their diapers. We had heard of two suggestions in the past. The first was to put the diaper on backwards so that the tabs that hold it on are in back. Theoretically, they won’t find the tabs to pull, and therefore won’t be able to remove their diapers. We chose the second approach: duct tape.

We put a single strip of duct tape across the front of Miranda’s diaper. She scratched at it a bit and decided it didn’t bother her. We put a strip of duct tape on Eleanor’s diaper too and put them in their cribs to sleep.

Two minutes later, I heard giggling and singing. I let it go for another fifteen minutes before I went in to see what was happening. Eleanor and Miranda were both standing in their cribs talking to each other. I told them both to lie down and go to sleep.

A little while later, they were talking and laughing again. I went in there again and they dropped down onto their cribs without me telling them to lie down. I was about to leave when I saw Eleanor was playing with something. It was her diaper. She was otherwise fully dressed, but somehow she slid out of her diaper and put her pants back on. I took off her pants, slid on her diaper (which wasn’t easy), and put her pants back on. I then put a big loop of duct tape all the way around her body to tape her pants and shirt together.

Eleanor didn’t get out of her diaper again, but neither she nor Miranda napped that day. When I finally pulled them out of their rooms, I had trouble getting them out of their diapers. When you pull duct tape off of a diaper, it rips. Ripped diapers are messy. I suppose scissors might have worked, but we haven’t tried duct tape again since then.

I’m not sure what to try next. We’ve made the room as dark as we can with heavy curtains. We’ve tried to physically tire them out in the mornings with some kind of activity. I’ve sat in the room with them to make sure they don’t stand up and talk (they peek through the crib bars and try to catch my eye).

I suppose the next step is to try separating them so they don’t keep each other up. One of them can nap in our room. We just won’t be able to nap at the same time, unless we want to sleep on the sofa.