Purposeful bedtime routine

Early on in our parenthood, we were very consistent with bedtime.  The kids are in bed between 7:30 and 8pm.  No questions.  We needed our evenings to ourselves.  Fortunately, our children like going to sleep (except Eliza, she's more of a night owl.  She will end up looking through books for awhile before falling asleep).  Audrey and Sammy will regularly tell us they are tired and ask us to put them to bed.  It's is a blessing. 

 

Our evening routine looks like this:

 



After dinner, the kids have a bath every other night.  Tonight was bath time.  Audrey and Eliza usually have fun together except Eliza was kind of mad in this picture at Audrey for getting water in her face.  Audrey for whatever reason decided she had to wear her swimsuit.  I'm flexible.  Sammy bathed before them.

Brush Teeth.  They all like to brush their teeth but I usually have to do touch ups afterwards. 
Story time:  When Sammy was 2, he jumped off the couch and hit his front tooth on the coffee table and killed it.  Very sad.  A year later, he got an abscess above the dead tooth.  After 3 months of waiting, he went in and had his tooth pulled out while he was under anesthesia.  Not fun.  Just the other night Sammy told me that he missed his tooth and wish it hadn't died. :(

Then we read stories.  Tonight was a bit random.  Jared was reading to Sammy.  I was reading to Audrey.  I found Eliza like this.  Then I read to both the girls in their room.  There was a lot of moving around.

Family prayer.  Hugs, kisses, everyone is tucked in. FYI... Michael usually is in bed before a lot of this process. 



Here I am.  Kids finally in bed.  I'm ready to slow down.  Thankfully my house has stayed clean.  Bedrooms are still in order.  Woohoo!  I have a couple loads of laundry to fold but I'll do that tomorrow.  My goal is to be in bed by 9:30 and wake up at 6:30 (I know I said in a previous post 5:30, I've been trying to but I'm just not ready to wake up.  I have years of sleep deprivation to recover from).

My bedtime routine has been a little more sporadic.  I'm working on being more consistent.  This is what I'm doing:

 

• I'm making a conscious effort to not watch TV or get on the computer the last 30 minutes before bed or longer.  The reason is that it's too much visual stimulation for our eyes and brain.  It makes it more difficult for our minds to shutdown. 
• make sure my body is warm enough (it's cold where I live)
• brush teeth, wash face, foot cream (like you want to know all this... haha.  Sorry.)
• I love putting on Pandora while I'm reading or journaling. 
• put lavender essential oil on my feet and breath it in for a bit
• say my prayers
• doing some relaxation techniques and breathing exercises to try to quiet my mind
• make sure my body is warm enough (it's cold where I live)

 

I'm excited with how I'm feeling so far and know that I only have one direction to go and that's up. :)  I better get ready to sleep.  Goodnight.