Happy Monday everyone! Instead of a loveday list post, this Monday I thought I would tackle a subject that I've wanted to write about for quite some time - sleeping and sleep routines for toddlers! For my fellow moms, we all know it's something that is essential for our sanity! Knock on wood, Evie has always been a pretty decent sleeper. Aside from the first few months of her life (thanks to some colic and fussiness), she has usually been good with sleeping, which I definitely attribute to our nightly sleep routine. I thought I'd outline what we do for naps and for bedtime. I'd love to hear from other moms too!
Naps: Evie is now doing one nap per day. We usually wait to see how tired she looks and how she's acting but we usually aim for sometime between 12-1pm to put her down. As far as how we get her to go to sleep...unfortunately it's not as structured as bedtime is because she is either at one of the grandparents' houses during the week, or with us on the weekends, so it's tough to keep it consistent across all places. With us, we usually pick her up, give her a paci and a blankey, and carry her around the house for a couple minutes so that she can wind down. Sometimes she will just fall asleep in our arms. Other times, we put her in a small umbrella stroller and do a couple rounds around the house until she falls asleep. This usually always does the trick. The motion of the stroller is enough to get her little eyes to shut. :) I wish we could just put her down in her bed and she will sleep, but we aren't there yet. Maybe soon we can train her to sleep on her own. But for now, we're still helping soothe her to sleep for naps. Once she falls asleep, we transition her to her crib and she'll usually sleeep for 1 - 1.5 hours. On a rare occasion, she'll sleep 2 hours.
Bedtime: Our bedtime routine is much more structured because it's consistently my husband and I putting her to sleep. At around 7pm each night we go upstairs for bath time. We don't wash Evie every night, rather every other night (unless she got extra dirty that day), but we do put her in the bath so she can play with her toys and let out any remaining energy. After bath time, we wrap her in her towel, brush her teeth, clean her ears, and comb her hair. I then carry her over to our bed while daddy runs downstairs to make her a bottle of warm milk (yes, we still give her a bottle at night. I know, I know. We're hoping to transition to a sippy cup at night soon! But, she still likes the bottle.) At this point, Evie is usually pretty drowsy. I lay her down, moisturize her skin with lotion, and get her diaper and pajamas on. Afterwards, she'll lay down next to me and I'll read her a short book. By the time the story is over, daddy is at our side with the bottle and Evie reaches for it. After she finishes the bottle, I give her her pacifier and carry her over to her crib and put her down. Sometimes she is almost asleep, other times is still fully awake. However, she knows it's bedtime and will lay in her bed and cuddle with her pillow until she falls asleep.
I know we probably don't do everything perfectly, but this routine works for us! As Evie gets a bit older, we'll definitely start to switch things around. For example, we want to get her to drink her milk first and then brush her teeth. Also, once she's in a toddler bed, we will probably move the whole routine to her bed so that I can read to her there.
At the end of the day, if she's sleeping, I'm happy.
