exercise and sleep

I heard a set of pieces on NPR yesterday about new studies that are showing that activity and exercise, even in small amounts, help increase chemicals in the brain that aid in attention and concentration. Apparently there's schools and even companies that are building in 5 to 10 minutes "activity breaks" into their days, and it's leading to more focused students (even more interesting, the greatest improvement was in those students who were previously having the hardest time concentrating) and more productive workers. This made me think two things, 1) another example of how Montessori was spot-on in incorporating movement into education and realizing how important it is, and 2) schools really are shooting themselves in the foot when they get rid of recess and gym classes.

The past 2 days D has slept extremely well-- in bed by 7pm, sleeping through till 5am, then going back to sleep for another 2 hours or so. This is after just over a week of waking up twice a night before a 5/5:30am final wakeup. His naps have also been longer today and yesterday, too, stretching out to an hour or even 1.5hrs (normally 30-45mins), and he's waking up happy and babbling rather than crying. It's so odd to me how he goes through these sleep cycles, going for a while on 10 hours of sleep a night and short naps, then suddenly switching to 12+ hours at night with long naps, and then back again. I haven't noticed any pattern or rhyme or reason for it (growth spurts? mental milestones? pure randomness?), so am just accepting it and being quite thankful for the extra sleep and rest, knowing it won't last long. Donovan has many of the characteristics of what's considered an "easy temperament"-- deals well with change, is happy and easy going most of the time, adjusts well to new time zones when we traveled, is social and deals well with new people, etc. But he's never been that big on predictability or consistent schedules, definitely not one to live by a clock. I think he takes after his dad in that respect.