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Thursday, December 26, 2013

Bedtime Routines

Today was the day of epic tired-cranky, post-Christmas meltdowns and made me re-think the kids' bedtimes routines. Maybe plying them with bon-bons and hot cocoa before throwing a crazy-dance party is not the best way to settle them for bed.

Well, obviously. But I thought the bath-book-bed trio was brilliantly efficient and effective when applied consistently. After all, kids are creatures of habit, so I'm told, and function best when they know what to expect which is why we have a picture-calendar for Henry detailing if he'll be at school or home that day and try to stick to consistent mealtimes, snack, naptime (for Kat) and bedtime for both of them.

Kat perked up well before sunrise today (thank you Dada for handling that this morning) so logically I thought she would crash early for her nap. Nooo...I missed that hairline perfect time to put her down and she was way overtired. She took 1 1/2 hours to finally fall asleep, just a few minutes before I was going to suck it up and admit today would be a no-nap day (ah!).

Then tonight, she had her bath, put her own PJs on and settled down for her night-night book, all right on schedule until I turned on her lullaby music and cracked the door so her moon/stars nightlight would show up on the ceiling.

Cue the drama and we had close to 2 hours of overwrought distressed Kat where I see-sawed between "she's just overtired" to "what's WRONG??" It was time for Henry to go to bed so we just laid down in their room all together so I could keep tabs on the babe.

I stopped thinking she was sick when she started demanding "Rees DEES!" (read, please) and reached through her crib-bars for 5 board books and a big picture book. After energetically turning the pages, she carefully arranged them on her pillow....and laid down.

OK, I love that she loves her books, but this is a bit extreme even for me.