We used to have a lovely bedtime routine. I remember it well, though possibly through rose-colored lenses at this point. The kids would do showers/pjs/teeth, then we would read together. Then Lex would read to himself while I laid down with Eve, then I would lay with him. At some point Alan started watching TV with Lex at night, which worked out ok most nights. They would watch TV while I got Eve in bed, and then Lex would come upstairs and I’d get him settled. If Alan wasn’t home, then we fell back to our reading routine. That worked well enough. Lately, though, with summer and late track practices and Alan is now playing Minecraft with Lex and the whole routine is just shot. What’s worse, is that every night is kind of up in the air. Who goes to bed, when, is Alan home, how much screentime has Lex already had, etc. Which basically leaves me spending hours each evening just hanging out, still on-call, waiting for the kids to get in bed. It sucks. Last weekend at family meeting we had a long chat about it. The kids got to weigh in with their thoughts, and together we came up with a schedule for each of them. That was five days ago and we haven’t managed to follow it once. Ugh. One of Eve’s concerns was that she wanted music, like Lex, and she wanted to stay up later. We took care of both things, but then it ended up that Lex also pushed his bedtime back a bit and she got furious that, once again, she’s going to bed before him. It drives her crazy. We have long talks about why it’s ok for them to have different bedtimes. It drives me crazy. We got them both new speakers and I put my old phone in her room so she could listen to Pandora at night. It seems to keep her up rather than help her sleep. Last night I caught her leaving comments and engaging in the social media aspect of Pandora! Eeek! Today she listened to music in her room for much of the day (her American Girl hair salon had a rockin’ beat!), but when I took the music away at bedtime she had a huge meltdown. It sucked. However, the upside to meltdowns is that they wear the kid out faster! She’s asleep now, which is about an hour earlier than she has fallen asleep all week.

The main problem is that they want to do all these big kids things, like reading in bed and playing Minecraft with Alan, but they also want me to lay with them, which I love doing and don’t want to give up either. But that leaves me twiddling my thumbs and unable to settle into anything else, and it leaves me still parenting at 9pm at night. I guess the main problem is I’m tired. Maybe I should go to bed now. I think they are actually both asleep. Sweet dreams.