9pm. On a Good Night.

This week on Mom.me, I wrote about bedtime. Ahem.

Archer and Fable have always procrastinated bedtime, but the moment both heads hit their respective pillows, they’re out. (We still do cuddles where the two of us take turns cuddling/scratching backs/singing songs to both big kids.)

Bo and Revi, however, will get out of bed, turn on their light and sing songs to each other when they’re supposed to be sleeping. They will read each other books, have dance parties, play house, dress up, cook each other pretend dinners and sometimes attempt to sneak out of the house to ride bikes outside. In the pitch dark.

I used to get extremely angry and yell and ask them WHAT THE HELL THEY WERE DOING, TRYING TO CLIMB THE FRIDGE AT 10:23 P.M., WHEN THEY SHOULD BE IN BED DREAMING OF ALL THE WONDERFUL THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT? (I sometimes ask the kids what they want to dream about before bed, and then we make up a story about the dream and I ask them if they’re ready to close their eyes and watch what happens … It helps them go down SOMETIMES.)

But here’s the thing, getting angry when they creep out of their beds has never kept them in their beds. If anything, it has only made them more perseverant in their rebellion. So recently I experimented with giving up and letting them play themselves to sleep...

As stated in the post, we never really struggled with Archer and Fable at bedtime so this may be a twin thing. It may also be a "four children" thing because, mornings (getting the kids out the door) and nights (getting the kids into bed at a decent time) are the two most challenging aspects of having multiple children... and multiples.

As for our bedtime routine, it looks something like this.

6:30ish Dinner.

7ish: Bath/Shower Time. The kids bathe. (ED: We bathe the kids every other night unless it's a particularly sweaty/dirty day. Big kids shower. Little ones bathe. We do one hair wash a week (sometimes two, depending on sweat and sand), usually on Tuesdays because that's when they have swimming.)

7:30ish pajamas, brush teeth, story time. (I stay with Bo and Revi and Hal reads to Fable, usually, while Archer reads to himself in bed.) Sometimes Fable joins us in the twins' room or Hal will read to the twins while I read to Fable in her room. Hal and I trade off in shifts, going back and forth between both bedrooms.

8:00ish Story time has turned into a concert, somehow. Or a dance party. Or a dance party concert.

8:30 The Dance party is over now because, seriously, you guys. IT'S BED. TIME. and then we do this thing where Revi turns off the light, gets into bed and then I have to turn the light BACK ON so that Bo can turn it off and get into bed and then Revi gets out of bed to turn on the sound machine and then she gets back into bed as Bo gets out of her bed to turn the sound machine off and then on again and then everyone has to be RE-TUCKED in and then as soon as everyone is tucked in, everyone needs water and then I get them water and by the time I come back, they're playing their tiny guitars and/or jumping in their beds and/or trying to sneak into Archer and Fable's room after turning the light on in their bedroom (again) and turning OFF the sound machine.

9:00 They're asleep. (I wish.) Last night they didn't go down until 10:30 (I'm blaming jet lag) and Revi was still awake at 11:30 when I went to check on them. But at least she was in bed?

Anyway, yeah. That's where we're at with sleep. We're a fucking mess pretty much NBD. (You can read more of the column, here/comment with your kids' go-to-bedtime stories. I'm always so curious to hear from others re: bedtime because I know some families who put their kids down as early as 6 and as late as 11. So, you know... there's quite the spectrum happening here.)

GGC