How long is your bedtime routine?

I an totally fed up with Rachel's bedtime. Tonight it took me 45 minutes to give her a bath, diaper, jammies, read 2 books, put her in her crib & say Goodnight. When I leave DH goes in to say Goodnight. As soon as he left she started crying, wanting a longer goodnight, knocking things out of her crib, etc. It is now an hour after we started her bath & she is still crying, calling us to come back in. Tell me about your bedtime routine. Does it go like this???

 

My girls are 4 1/2, 2 1/2, and 1 1/2. I've always kept it pretty simple. Since DD1 has to get up early for preschool 4 days a week, bedtime is 7:30/8:00 for all three. So at 7 we start with snack (dry Cheerios and milk), then PJs, and it's off to bed. Depending on the time DD1 might get a story. When it's bath night we start at 6:30 and it's bath, snack, PJs, and bed.

 

QUOTE(Jen620 @ Oct 7 2007, 09:29 PM) [snapback]439906[/snapback]
My girls are 4 1/2, 2 1/2, and 1 1/2. I've always kept it pretty simple. Since DD1 has to get up early for preschool 4 days a week, bedtime is 7:30/8:00 for all three. So at 7 we start with snack (dry Cheerios and milk), then PJs, and it's off to bed. Depending on the time DD1 might get a story. When it's bath night we start at 6:30 and it's bath, snack, PJs, and bed.

I'm curious from the start of snack until they are down & you're out of the bedroom - how long is the process. I get so frustrated with R because I think she is such a staller - just not wanting to get in bed. I'm wondering how normal the 45 mins is?

 

Well our bedtime routine is the same for all 5 of mine, who are 5, 3, 3, 2, and 7 months. It takes me 45 minutes and we do bath, pajamas, sing 5 songs (1 each), pray and get in bed with good nights. I read to them in the morning, so no bedtime story here!!

 

It really depends, but for P and P we do bath (10-15 min), then put on jammies, 2- 3 stories, kisses goodnight and prayer. On average about 30-40 minutes for everything. P and P go down to bed without a fight. Now Chloe on the other hand is a different story.

 

Do you feel like 45min is too long for the routine PRE bedtime or the problem is after you acutally put her in the bed? I have never allowed stalling at bedtime for any of my kiddos. From the infant stage on, if it's a bath night it isn't directly before bed, there's usually about 20 to 30 min of quite playtime after bath before bed. Now that my youngest are over 2, bedtime consists of "okay, time for night night" and we go to their room. (the three youngest still share a room) I change each one into diaper/pjs/ect, then we sing our ONE bedtime song and then it's into beds/crib kisses all around, MAYBE one extra round of kisses and then it's "night night", light off, door shut. I don't go back. My Kayci sometimes cries when I leave the room but settles down quickly because she knows I'm not coming back. In your case I would keep your prebed routine the same but let her know that once she's in bed, that's it. If she comes out of her room, try the door knob cover or a gate. GL!

 

Waaaaayy too long! And I'm only counting from the time we go back to brush teeth. Jammies are already on. It's about 1 hour.

We brush teeth, , then read two books (one each) on the floor, change diapers (sigh), then two more (one each) in their beds, and then they both insist on washing their hands (yes, every single night, definitely a stall tactic), then we turn out the light and we say the colors of the rainbow and sing a rainbow song and then it's quiet and I sit on the big chair with my booklight on and read until they fall asleep. Bad habit, I know, but I've been getting more reading done...

But yes, this generally takes from 7:45-close to 9 PM and that's after tubby, jammies, show, milk...

 

We are pretty quick and simple here. On bath night it's about 30 min on other nights it's about 15 min. We do jammies, brush teeth, 1 quick story and we tuck them in. Bath nights takes a longer because I have to blow dry Sofia's hair.

 

Ours keeps getting longer and longer. It used to take about 45 minutes, and now it takes about an hour and a half. That includes one lonnnnnnggggg bath. (DH gives them a bath while I clean up dinner dishes and put toys away. So some nights it takes longer.) And too, now that Hannah is potty trained, we have to devote another 10 minutes to the whole potty process right before she goes to bed.

One recent thing that has started to happen is that Ben wants me to sing to him (and we sing together, which just melts my heart since he is such a man of few words and it is funny to hear him try and sing along). It really helps soothe him, but each night it seems we add one more song to the list and heaven forbid we actually leave a song out

 

I put them in their cribs and read a story from a rocking chair in the middle of the room. I have a book of 3 minute stories. Sometimes they'll fall asleep while I'm reading (usually about 4-5 stories - so 15min) then I leave the room and don't go back. I read to them in the crib so they relax faster.
HTH

 

Ours is fairly simple also since I give baths after dinner at 5pm so they are already in jammies by 5:30. They have snack at 6 watch a fave show or play and up to bed at 7. We read them a quick story and say goodnight. Sometimes they cry or whine for about 5 minutes or so but mostly they throw everything out of their cribs and I go in a 1/2 later pick everything up (in the dark) and cover them. I also check on them a few times before I go to bed.