As my husband and I were wrangling our girls into their cribs tonight, I started thinking about how our bedtime routine has evolved over the past year and a half. The evolution is due in part to their age but always because there are three of them.
When the girls were about 15 months old, we added reading books in their room to the routine. I would sit in the glider chair in their bedroom with all three and read a few books. It’s not that we didn’t normally read to them, just that they didn’t seem to have the attention span prior to that age for me to read to all three at once. It was at about this age that delay tactics made an appearance and those have continued and evolved as well.
Before the girls’ second birthday, they outgrew (literally not figuratively) the glider chair so we decided to have them sit on little stools in front of the chair while I read to them. That didn’t work out so well as (mostly) Anna liked to jump up and touch every page in the book while adding some commentary which made getting through a book a very long task. We transitioned to having them sit in their cribs while I sat on the floor (in a spot where they could all see) and read. A few months ago, we decided that they were “mature” enough to sit in little chairs while I sat in the floor in front of them. This routine worked out well but within the past few weeks, we noticed that the girls have been too hyper at night to sit and concentrate on a book so we have transitioned once again. They now each look through a book while they spend some alone time with Mommy in the glider.
My husband and I have discussed what bedtime routines are like with singletons. I suppose a parent would sit be able to sit in a chair or on the side of a bed with one child in order to read books to that child. And that older children wouldn’t require both Mommy and Daddy at bedtime, freeing up a parent. I’m assuming that it is a lot different from our bedtime.
Oh, I should have mentioned that part of our bedtime routine has always involved me rocking/cuddling in the glider with each of the girls for about five minutes alone. They really seem to enjoy this special time partly because there is no competition. Each has to wait her turn. Although, for the longest time I did try to rotate the order of who went first, second and third. Every night, Emily would tell me that it was her turn to go first. So I guess there was a bit of competition but for the most part, their special time was uninterrupted.
Delay tactics have also evolved. There have always been the pleas for more water and now that we are potty training, someone always declares that she has to go on the potty at the last minute. At that broadcast, the other two announce that they have to go as well. We have been giving in because 90% of the time, someone goes and we are in the early stages of potty training.
Our next transition will be to separate rooms and toddler beds. Yikes!!!
Any tips to moving to toddler beds? How have your bedtime routines changed and do you feel that having multiples played a role in those changes?
Sarah is the mother to “almost” three year old identical triplet girls – Allie, Anna and Emily – who were born at 35 weeks and 6 days. You can read more about her crazy life raising triplets at The Great Umbrella Heist.