Mom Talk : Sleep for Brian + Grace

Hi Friends!! Back this month with another Mom Talk all about how we handle sleep with Brian + Grace. I’ve teamed up with some of my favorite mom bloggers who all have kids at different ages. We’re all writing about this today so be sure to check out their blogs to read how they approach sleep with their little ones 🙂

Okay so I have to say, and please don’t be mad at me, but sleep itself is an absolute dream with Brian and Grace. Once these kids are asleep, they stay asleep until the morning, unless they are sick. We NEVER allowed them in our bed at night… actually I shouldn’t say “allow”. We never really invited them to sleep in our bed unless they were totally sick and we needed to keep our eyes on them in the night. I think I can count on one hand the nights they spent with us. I know everyone has different feelings on this but it has worked for us. They love their beds, and we like the room to stretch out and sleep through the night without any jabs. Also, I feel like our bed is the one place we have in our house that is just ours and I like it that way.

Going to bed is a different story. It takes SO long. Just tonight I said to Brian as we were about to start the whole shebang that I wish we had a bed time fairy. I’d say start to finish we’re upstairs getting ready for bed with them for a solid hour, sometimes longer 😩 They just don’t want to go to sleep, like ever.

We begin our journey anytime between 7 and 7:30. For this posts sake let’s say 7. We all go upstairs and bathe. Sometimes we stick them in our shower, sometimes we put them in the bath although I will say the older they get, the more efficient a shower seems. One of us will stay in the bathroom while they play in there and then we just lean in and clean them. We usually let them stay in there for about 10-15 minutes. Out them come, we each take a kid and dry them off, put on some lotion and dress them in their PJ’s. Then it’s teeth. We let them brush their teeth but we always go over at the end to make sure they did a decent job. Then we feed the fish, Kiki and Zombi. It’s a miracle these guys are still alive, between Grace knocking on their tank, dumping an entire bottle of food in their tank once, and vacations with no care, they swim on 🐟

We start their diffusers, SLEEPYIZE oil for the WIN! If they are fighting a cold or something, I’ll put Thieves in their diffusers. Sound Machines on.

Story time. We typically read for 20 minutes to both Brian and Grace, and Brian is a beginner reader so he usually takes one and it is THE.CUTEST.THING ever. After stories, we tuck them in and the lights go out.

Then the real sh*t starts. “One more story”, “Mom, I think there is a monster in my closet”, Mom, can I have fresh water? This one is from last night…”, Mom, can you do “special tuck-in?”, “Mom, can you hold my hand for 2 minutes?”, Dad, can you sing me song?”. These requests go on for a solid ten minutes on a good night. It’s hard to say no so we indulge them. Then we go downstairs. We’re around 8:15 now. On a good night, we’ll be golden. If there are people over, forget it. We can’t get them down until after 9. Brian is really into drawing and writing letters so we let him turn on his light and work at his desk if he can’t fall asleep. One night it was like 10 PM and Brian and I were deep into True Detective, B appears out of nowhere and we nearly jumped off the couch. He had written Valentine’s to every single kid in his class out of plain letter paper and envelopes. We were so touched we were both in tears. I’ll never forget that night.