Saturday 27 June 2015

Life With Kids: Our Revised Bed-Time Routines

Things have certainly changed (mostly) for the better now that the kids all sleep in their own beds and in the same room!
Of course M-Girl occasionally wakes up and wants to crawl in bed with us and just because it's summer doesn't mean we get to sleep in AT ALL.  We've been up by 6 am (usually around 5:30 - like this morning) every freaking day this summer holiday.
I may as well be in cadet summer camp again! I told a friend and it's true.

Anyway, if you're wondering what it's like in our household to put 3 kids to bed - here we go!
I am mentally working on other posts but we are going to be travelling from Tuesday to Friday - so there will probably be a few delays as usual!

  • 7-7:30 pm - V-Man is the first to get ready and the first to go down.  He gets 2mg of melatonin after brushing his teeth and lies in his bed while SH reads his e-book.
  • 7:30 pm - A-Man and M-Girl get their teeth brushed and get ready for bed.
  • 7:45 pm - I lie down with M-Girl and give her the teddy bears and cover her in a blanket.  Then she sticks her bare little feet at me because I am expected/we have this ritual where I must sniff her feet and make silly faces and gagging/barfing sounds.  It makes her laugh - so I do it and her feet are cute now.  
    • I absolutely hate feet - so I'm enjoying this for as long as possible because grown-up feet are just gross.  Useful and practical in every way - but they're just stumps with long extensions (toes).
    • Once my duty of sniffing feet is done - I'm usually responding to e-mails, on Facebook or blogging on my phone.
  • While M-Girl is with me and SH is with V-Man, A-Man is quietly (trying) reading and playing a colour board game.  He regularly runs back and forth demanding someone comes to play with him but if either of us moves - then the kids get back up and running around again.
  • 8:00 pm A-Man is back and demanding I crawl in his bed to sleep with him.  But I can't because M-Girl is now super awake.  I explain repeatedly that I cannot leave until M-Girl is asleep - every single night.
  • 8:20 pm - M-Girl is usually asleep by now and I crawl into A-Man's bed and he tucks me in and blows me a kiss and tells me he loves me "Va care ya".
    Within 10 minutes he is asleep and I'm usually in an intense conversation with a friend - usually from Canada on Whatsapp.
So typically by 9 pm and after nearly 2 hours of getting the kids ready to sleep - they're finally out.
In case you're wondering, no - I can't just toss them into the bedroom and tell them to play quietly (or not at all) until they go to sleep.  They're still pretty young for that and A-Man is so disruptive that he keeps the others awake.
And I don't want them to have a screaming match - which always leads to someone getting pinched, slapped or their eyes poked (M-Girl's latest move for retaliating against her brothers)...

This is a huge difference compared to having A-Man and M-Girl in bed with me and SH having to sleep with V-Man on the sofa bed!

Yesterday was a huge change to our schedule and our kids didn't get to sleep until nearly 9:30 pm because we had our future dog-sitters/my classmate/friend over with her family.
They were gone by 8 pm which was lovely because that meant all the kids were super tired after!
But the saddest thing was that V-Man really enjoyed having them over so much that he began really smacking his head when they were leaving and screaming like crazy.
SH had to pick him up and squeeze him hard and whisper that it was okay - they can visit another time.
It was V-Man's first time meeting my friends and while I'm super glad that he had fun with them (my classmate's chest was not spared by the V-Man's grip!) - I wish he didn't get so upset that they had to leave (they have a little one about M-Girl's age and it was way past his bedtime!).

Happy Sunday,
BIMU

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