Progress on Bed Time

For the longest time, Riley has been our easy girl to put to sleep at night and Addison has fought bed time with every ounce of her being. Riley used to be our one with the bed time issues and to deal with those issues, I would put Riley to sleep by rocking with her and giving her extra mommy time, which I think she needed. Jesse would be the one to dress Addison for bed and deal with putting her to sleep. Somewhere along the way, Addison started refusing to go to sleep. If you tried to put her in her crib awake, she would scream bloody murder and wake up her sister. This was always a stressful situation to have both babies up screaming at bed time when all Jesse and I needed was a little down time.

So as inexperienced parents, we started giving into Addison by allowing her to stay up later and play and get extra mommy and daddy time before she would conk out on the living room floor. We were putting her to bed asleep rather than awake which I know is not smart. This routine continued for months and months.

With Jesse's new work schedule, I am often left to putting both girls to bed by myself so I would put Riley to sleep at 7pm with no issues and then help Addison get comfy and sleepy. Addison was staying up until 8:30 or sometimes 9pm and that was not working in my schedule. I turned out the lights in the front room and would rub her back and just give her individual attention and after a few nights, I was able to put her to sleep "sleepy" but still awake. She would get into her crib and I would get her all comfy with her blanket and BAM, she would go right to sleep. For the past week she has gone to sleep by 7:30 at the latest and the only night she went to sleep by falling asleep before hand was on Jesse's watch. On my watch, Addison will not be allowed to go to sleep in the living room. She needs to know that she goes to sleep in her room. Last night she went to bed at 7pm. She talked to herself for about 5 minutes and then she was out for the entire night.

Now I get that down time at night that I need to recharge my batteries and allow me to watch terrible reality TV to put myself to sleep. Normally I don't watch TV hardly at all but I do love to partake in the bad reality TV once in a while.

I hope this new bed time routine sticks and I can know that another caregiver or babysitter could actually put the girls to sleep and not have a big fight out of the girls. Riley doesn't even need to be rocked to sleep anymore and that makes the whole routine doable for one person, if need be.