Bedtime has always been a bit of a headache in our house.
I somehow seem to have birthed the three most sleep-opposed mini humans ever known to man, and the result of this is that no matter how many different bedtimes we try - they are often awake long past 10 pm.
Throw in the effects of lockdown, and bedtime becomes somewhat chaotic to say the least!
The lack of fresh air thanks to the adverse weather we've been having lately combined with the decreased opportunity to run off steam has meant that the children tend to be full of beans when it's time to settle down to sleep.
For this reason, we've had to really double down on our bedtime routine efforts to encourage sleepiness in our three wild ones.
For the last few weeks, we've made some simple changes to our bedtime routine which - touch wood - seem to be creating a calmer evening environment, even if that doesn't necessarily always lead to earlier sleep times.
To start with we've reintroduced bath time before bed - something we stopped a while ago as it was getting them hyped up instead of calming them. The trick seems to be seperating them - although it's easier and faster to bath them together, the three of them in an enclosed space leads to mayhem.Instead we find it easier for them each to take shorter, separate baths.
After their bath, we apply some lavender scented essential oil balm to their wrists - this seems to help settle them down more.
And then it's time for a bedtime story - we used to have the children take it in turns to choose a story book of an evening, but it would always lead to arguments about who's turn it was and debates over which book they wanted to have.
We recently discovered a bedtime savior to solve these problems.
Story Tyke is a FREE service that aims to help make parents lives that little bit easier by providing a nightly bedtime story.
You simply sign up for the service at www.storytyke.com - then a different story is delivered to your inbox each evening at 6pm, completely free of charge.
The stories are fun and enjoyable for children, and just the right length for bedtime - and the ease of having them on my phone via email is ideal!It means no more arguing over which story to have.
We're finding this combination of things to work pretty well so far, and I live in the hope that eventually one day - they'll want to go to sleep before 10 pm!
