Bedtime Routine

I found out pretty quickly that Josiah needs to “wind down” like his Papa at night, and so like other mothers do, I established a more regimented routine for him at night so that he knew we were getting him ready for bed. And now we have a fun routine that I think he really looks forward to. I sing, “Bath time for babies, bather bather time….” And he runs over to the bathroom door and sometimes the closet door (they look the same when closed) and waits for me to come open it. He plays in his little tub inside the bathtub (although now he has graduated to the big tub) with his Ernie, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, & Elmo floating toys as well as his bath tub letters and numbers set. He will pick up a letter and say, “Say” to me and I will sound out the letter and make it hop on the ledge of the tub and give some examples of words that start with that letter. For the numbers, I count them out on my fingers and he watches very intently. He can find his four friends (mentioned above) at any time during the bath tub play and is very delighted with himself that he can find them. He has just learned how to use the bucket for himself and likes to fill it up and dump the water out. A couple of times he got himself in the face and was surprised. For a while there, he thought it was funny to “drink” the bath water, but I quickly put a stop to that practice! Ick! Yesterday, he stood up in the bath for some reason and I said, “standing up” and he got a smile and sat down and I said, “sitting down.” Following this discovery that Mommy says things when he stood up and sat down he proceeded to do it over and over. He almost slipped though a few times and so I had to help steady him. Luckily with the plastic tub in the tub, he didn’t bonk his head or get hurt from slipping down!

After the bath, I go and get him dressed in his pajamas and then I set him down and sing, “Story time, it’s story time, story, story time!” and then he clods off down the hall to find the story books. He will sometimes get some books himself and put them on the chair where we read and he makes this cute little noise (like he does when he is hungry) to let me know that he is ready to read (like a stuttering sound…hu, hu, hu, hu, hu). I will read the books to him, but many times he won’t let me finish them and grabs for another book when I am only halfway through. He especially likes the book with lots of different shapes, objects, people, and things in it and just wants me to go through naming them over and over. If I close this one too soon, he will find it again and want to point things out to me. He finds all the balls, cats (he says “meow” to them), and cars on all the pages that have them. Our last book is always the “Goodnight Blessings” book that has little flaps to open and shut. If he is really tired, I read the first words, “It’s time for bed. It’s time to say Goodnight!” and he flips the book out of my hands and turns over to sleep. Other times, he takes all the books and throws them on the floor and then wants to read them himself down there.

When it is time to sleep, we go and visit Daddy and he gives Josiah a kiss and a goodnight cuddle, and then either Daddy or Mommy sings, “Sleeper time, Sleepy, sleeper time” very softly as we bring him to bed. Sometimes he fusses a little when going to sleep, but mostly he just cuddles up with blankie bear and blanket and nods off to dream land.