Bedtime Follies

Going from two kids to three has been a pretty big adjustment in many ways, but one of the most difficult (and, on my part, least expected) new challenges has been managing bedtime.

My husband doesn't have a 9 to 5 kind of job.  He does his best to be around to help out during the week, but that means he's usually home at 7 instead of staying until midnight or later (which he could easily do and probably still have work to bring home).  So I feed the kids at around 6, and once Daddy comes home it's bathtime - and then things are pretty much a blur for the next hour and a half or so while we try to get everybody settled for the night (or whatever portion of the night they happen to sleep).  When Tom is out of town or has to work late, it's even more insane.  Not because three kids is all that many, mind you, but because two of them are rambunctious, willful toddlers who don't follow directions, aren't yet able to do anything for themselves, and can't be left alone for five seconds - and Patrick, as helpful as he can be at times, is a six-year-old boy, which makes him slightly more inclined to ramp things up than he is to help settle things down.

I would love to get to the point where Tom or I could read to Samuel and Ellie together, but they are just too young right now and Ellie isn't used to sitting through story time.  So after we've done the bath and managed to wrangle the little ones into their PJs, Patrick gets his stories first - since he usually gets up the earliest and is way beyond napping - while one of us entertains the little ones in the playroom.  Then it's Samuel's turn for stories with Daddy, and Ellie's turn with me.  That's when the real fun begins.

Ellie loves her bottle.  We sit in her darkened room while she drinks her formula, with her lovey in the crook of one arm and her nearest arm tucked under mine (LOVE that).  White-noise machine, blackout curtains, ceiling fan on "high" to cool the room.  We hold each other while we rock, and I sing, and it's all incredibly sweet - until the formula is gone.  Then begins a routine that can only be described as a cross between a dance, a wrestling match and an Olympic floor-pacing event.  Ellie wiggles.  She squirms.  She playfully pinches.  Sometimes, she hits - babbling and giggling all the while.  I get up out of the glider and walk slowly back and forth across the room, cradling her and singing softly.  She tries to get down - at which point I place her gently in her crib, stroking her softly and still singing.  She wiggles.  She squirms.  She babbles and bounces.  I pick her up and begin pacing again, trying to cradle her as she writhes in my arms - and ultimately, sometimes after several repeats, she falls asleep.  Often within moments of being at her squirmiest.  I pace a few minutes more to be sure she is asleep, then ever-so-carefully place her in the crib and tiptoe out of her room.  Whew.

I recently described a little of this routine to my mom, and when I got to the carrying-Ellie-around-the-room part she said, "Oh, you don't want to start that, do you?"  A fair question - from a person who's never parented a recently-adopted toddler.  No, at 19 months I wouldn't have been pacing the floor with either of my boys, unless they were sick.  But Ellie has only been home six weeks - and sleep-wise, response-time-wise, we are to treat her as if she were a newborn.  A newborn who happens to weigh 23 pounds.  Exhausting, yes - but it's been great for my biceps, and I've lost more than 10 pounds since we got back from China.  The really good news is, it's usually taking less than half an hour now - at one point, it had been taking about an hour each night to get her to sleep.  And truth be told, I wouldn't miss the struggle for anything -  because in sticking through it we are building trust, which is our most important task right now.  An easier bedtime routine will have to wait.

By the way, she hasn't slept through the night again since I posted about it on the blog.  Jinx.