What's a bedtime, anyway?

A. and I have often spoken of the dreaded 5:00 "nap," when it's unclear if you should let a kid sleep (hopefully for the night) or wake them, only to have them refuse to go to sleep until hours after the normal bedtime (and usually after the parent herself wants to go to bed).  Now LG was one of those kids, at least in the 3-5 era, that if she actually fell asleep in the late afternoon, more often than not she'd sleep 12 hrs and wake at a reasonable hour (like, no earlier than 5:30).

Yesterday I spent the entire afternoon letting Tiny Boy nurse, fall asleep, and wake up within 30 minutes because he a) needed to burp, b) needed a diaper, c) got startled by something, or d) some babyness I will never understand.  Granted he was happy and playful, but it was blatantly obvious that what he needed was a nap.  I fed him at 5:30, just before LG and I sat down for dinner, figuring that was his last chance at a nap for the day.  Instead, he spent dinner kicking in his bouncer, becoming progressively fussier.  I put him in the carrier, which just pissed him off.  I finally swaddled him (yes, we're revisiting Karp around these parts), crammed a pacifier into his mouth, took him into the semi-dark kitchen, where he promptly fell asleep at 6:15.

Philosophical and parenting questions ensued:  is this a nap or a bedtime?  Do I let him sleep?  What is a bedtime to a 10 week old, anyway?

Still swaddled, he slept in the moses basket in my room through LG's bedtime rituals, through me playing on the computer, through me contemplating going to bed.  Yes, folks, he was still sleeping at 10:00, which is the longest he has ever gone without feeding.  I tried cramming a breast in his mouth and he eventually started sucking.  He didn't actually wake until 1:00 am, which might have had something to do with me deciding he was way too hot and changing his diaper and putting him back to sleep in a onesie and then giving him his missed dose of zantac and attempting to reswaddle him.  Why the hell would you do that, you are probably wondering.  Yes, indeed.  It then took me the better part of two hours to get the smiley boy back to sleep, thanks to the waterfall CD that never did a darn thing when LG was a baby.

But it's playing again now, while my recently fed and swaddled boy takes an actual nap in an actual crib.  While I have no illusions that he'll sleep for any great length of time, it seems there is the glimmer of a possibility of an early morning naptime in our house.  Waterfalls and swaddling, it seems.

Let a morning routine begin.