Clearly my baby is a genius and other reasons he won't nap....

Ok, dear readers, this is a call for help... I am not above giving out advice and right now, I am not above getting some back. I have read and re-read all my books, I have searched the internet, I have randomly stopped women in the street. But still, I sit here, baby monitor close by, listening to the little guy not nap.

And he's been not napping for months now. 

Ok, he's only been alive for months but really, other than like the 1st month when most of his life was a nap (and a milk drinking contest), the nap for Archer (and consequently, for me), remains elusive.

I knew I had a real problem when we recently did a family portrait photo shoot and after taking a bunch of cute active family shots, the photographer instructed me to "have Archer take a nap"... she thought it would be extra cute (and it would be) to have some shots of Archer sleeping. 

Wha?? Put him down for a nap? On command? Are people able to do that? Really?

So fine, maybe even this is a lot to ask, but when my girlfriend, and DM herself, T, came to town she said she would come over when Archer went down for his afternoon nap. "When would that be?" she asked, quite reasonably. "Ummm, whenever he wants" I replied. Her response was a delayed "Alrighty then" and I knew right then and there something was not quite right. 

Going back to my baby books, I confirmed that indeed the nap is important - babies Archer's age need anywhere from 10-14 hours of sleep a day to thrive. He's sleeping about 8 hours at night which means that we've got at least 2 lost hours. 

This is not to say that Archer doesn't sleep during the day but it's completely random. Like, for example, after trying and trying to get him to have a nap at around 9am, and then again at 10am, he finally fell asleep at 11:30am... 15 minutes before the start of his first music class.

Grrrreat.

So after thinking about it, researching it, and thinking about it some more, here are the best reasons I can come up with on why Archer isn't napping:

1. Clearly he's a genius. One of my baby books says that an early sign of genius is that the baby doesn't need much sleep. And well, look at the picture above. Do you need any more proof? I'm *not going to take it personally that my mom advised that I slept like all the time when I was a baby.

2. He loves me soooo much that he misses me when he naps. I mean, that pretty much goes without saying but I think it's a valid reason.

3.  He knows deeply how much I love him and miss him when I nap and is like super empathetic so stays awake to keep me happy.

That's all I got. 

Remarkably, my baby books and even the internet, don't really have a lot of advice on how to get baby to adhere to a napping schedule. That's probably because it comes pretty naturally to most babies... but not Archer! Sigh....

Do you have any tips to pass on to help here? If so, I'd love to hear them.

Oh, and btw, halfway through this post, I, of course, went and got Archer out of his bedroom where he was not napping and he is happily playing beside me on his playmat.... genius, I tell you! Genius.