Friday 24 February 2012

On routines

We've had some awful bedtimes this week. The boy can climb out of his cot now, so he does, within 10 seconds of us leaving the room. And he misses his daddy in the day so he likes to play with daddy in the evening. Particularly the chase-me-round-the-room game. Monday & Tuesday were just run-of-the-mill difficult, to be expected after a weekend away. Wednesday ended in Isaac throwing up all over me. Although he went straight to sleep after that. Thursday was the worst - I was crying by the time he finally went down! It really got me down that it seemed I had to reduce him to tears to get him to sleep.

We do a no interaction, straight back in bed method to try to get him to sleep. It worked well from just after he turned 1 until he learned to get out of his cot. So now we're in the market for a new method & I have 3 books on the toddler years to mine for ideas. I usually read the book, think about what will work for us & Isaac then discuss it with Andy to come up with a plan. We also have a cotbed to assemble tomorrow, which we hope will contain him a little better. And a groclock sleep trainer. And some prayers.

And what about tonight? Well, today was a write-off. I decided this morning that if we were all alive by the evening then we'd call the day a success. So we abandoned housework & went with the flow. Isaac napped until he woke up on his own. I ate scrambled eggs & jaffa cakes for lunch. And we ended up at Hobbycraft in Coventry at 5pm due to a combination of wishful thinking, rush-hour traffic & faulty satnav programming. Which is why we had meatballs for dinner at IKEA (daddy met us there) and didn't get home until 7pm. I cancelled my evening plans & fed the baby. Andy put the boy to bed. And he went out like a light just after half 7.

All of which is the long way of saying sometimes the routine needs tweaking, sometimes it needs more advice & sometimes it just needs throwing out the window.
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Aw I feel your pain. We have had a few bad nights here resulting in tears from both me and m. But like you I'm turning to books to find a system which works for me. Xxx thoughts and prayers with you xxx