We live in a city, and it takes us about an hour to get anywhere (on public transport, which he will rarely sleep on now he's in his sit-up buggy) and whenever we get anywhere, my 6.5 m.o DS is always either hungry or sleepy (depending on when we leave the house), and we can never actually join in with anything properly. It's rubbish! So I think I need to sort his daytime naps out, and I need some help. Can someone please talk me though pooling naps. Where do I start?
At the moment he seems to like to nap every hour and a half (when he starts rubbing his eyes, yawning, and staring into space), for varying lengths of time, for a total of about 4 hours per day. If I had to generalise, I'd say he tends to nap for an hour after he wakes up (8 - 9), then he's up for an hour and a half (9 - 10.30), and then he likes to nap for a couple of hours (10.30 - 12.30), then he's up for an hour and a half again (12.30 - 2), then he likes to nap for an hour or so (2 - 3.30), then he's up for an hour and a half (3.30 - 5) and then he likes to nap again until about 5.45. I know the last one is weird, but it never seems to affect his nighttime sleep (he always wakes up about 4 times a night). For example, last night I managed to keep him awake from 16.30 until 19.00 and he was fine, but it took a lot of effort and distracting, so I know I can do it, but I need a plan. What should I be aiming for?
As a bit of background, I'm currently sleep training (by putting him in his cot awake, saying goodnight, leaving the room, and coming back intermittently so he knows I'm still around if he needs me) and it's going great! He can now self settle and I'm not feeding him in the night, and although he still wakes up (a lot - about 5 times), I can get him back to sleep now, so I'm hoping we just need to keep going until he gets out of the habit, or that it's a temporary growth/ teething issue.
(Sorry if this has already been done, but find the MN search tool really hard to use effectively)