I'm finding that there are three tricky times we face every day: getting LG out the door, negotiating nursing and feeding LG dinner, and putting the kids to bed. The first has largely been dealt with, as she's been walking to the bus stop with a neighbor friend. The second is usually a matter of staggering, either nursing Tiny Boy right before we eat or leaving LG to finish by herself, depending on if/when he's taken a late afternoon nap. But bedtime? That's proving to be quite challenging.
Part of the problem is that LG has a very protracted set of bedtime rituals that neither one of us really wants to give up. It involves reading for a while by herself (but preferably in my bed), snuggling and drinking rice milk and talking about our "good things" for the day, brushing teeth, taking medicine, being tucked in and lights out. When Tiny Boy was small and on nothing resembling a schedule, it was easy enough for the three of us to pile in my bed while she read and I nursed him or something and then holding him while she went about the rest of her routine. But now, although Tiny Boy's actual bedtime varies from night to night, his need to sleep about an hour after his last nap is necessary. It seems to work best if I can actually get him down for the night at 6:00 or 6:30 (LG starts her reading routine [or extra math homework] generally around 6:45, with a 7:30-7:45 lights out. But often I can't...or he wakes and I need to ditch LG to rock him (again), which isn't any fun for anyone. Last night I started nursing/putting him to sleep at 5:45...he fell asleep around 6:15 and then woke up...and the process began again, and again, until finally I gave up and put him to bed after LG. Which meant a very tired crabby baby. And a big kid who didn't have her mom because she was too busy rocking her not-sleeping brother.
There's got to be a better way to go about this, but I can't figure it out. One of them isn't getting what they need. And that's the one thing that sucks about being a single parent.
Even with two parents sometimes the bedtime ritual doesn't work at all. We had a period of time when it was madness ... but it sorted itself out eventually when N. figured out how to self-soothe a bit. I hate to say that, but it's true. :P
ReplyDeleteHang in there.
Yeah, that whole self-soothing thing would be good. But his cry is so alarming--and so easy to turn off by picking him up--that it's hard to imagine leaving him to cry while I do something "fun" with LG.
ReplyDelete