sharing our bedtime story
In honor of Mother’s Day coming up this weekend, I’ve teamed up with The Company Store to share our family’s bedtime story.
I’ll be honest with you guys. Most nights, our bedtime routine is anything but. As you might guess from this first pic, it’s mostly chaos! Between after school activities, homework for my oldest, the witching hour, and trying to get dinner on the table, it’s just a little bit of madness around here. But I do think that routine is beneficial for our kiddos, and for us parents too. So on an average night, I try to stick to this routine as much as possible.
As soon as we get home from school and/or activities, it is the kid’s responsibility to unpack their backpacks and lunchboxes and hang them up. And then I just pretty much let them play, aka run wild for a while. They miss seeing each other all day and they love to just run around when they are back together! If it’s nice out, I send them outside. I try to avoid letting them watch TV at this time as much as possible. Even though it can get really loud [omg so loud] when they play, they are kids! And that is part of being a kid, right?
When my husband isn’t traveling for work, I am pretty lucky that he gets home around 5:00pm most days to help out with our evening routine. I’ve said this before but he is a super hands-on dad. [gush] He is usually the one who makes dinner, while I try to finish a bit of work and the kids play. We make a point to all have dinner together as much as possible. So during dinner time, it’s no phones or other distractions! It’s honestly such a short amount of time, but something that’s so important to us. Then it’s off to clean up!
My oldest is pretty independent now, so he showers and does his own bedtime routine. He also has nightly reading to do for school, so in this time, he usually will be working on that as well. My husband and I switch off on bathtime for the two little ones. We usually do the two of them at the same time, either in the tub or the shower. I can promise you I do not do flower baths every night! Only when I have leftovers that are about to go in the trash anyway. 😉
After bath time there is a little bit more of the run around time where we try to let them get their crazies out! Haha. Then it’s jammies and brushing teeth. If we still have some time, we will let them watch a show on the tv. We try our best to do stories every night. But again if I’m being honest, it’s become harder to do with three kids and the craziness. They all have different interests and reading levels. Reading them all independent stories just isn’t going to happen. So when we do it, we do it all together. We don’t have a set place where we read stories. Sometimes it’s in our room, sometimes in the kid’s rooms. Sometimes my oldest will join us for the “little kid” books too.
When Diego was a baby, we used to stagger the kid’s bedtimes. My kids have always shared rooms in some way or another and I love that! But that is why we staggered their bedtimes – so they could actually fall asleep with no distractions. Now that the boys are sharing a bedroom and Diego is a bit older, bedtime for everyone is at 8:00 pm. We found when we were putting him to be earlier he was waking up earlier. Like 5:30am – NO THANK YOU. So now they all wake up around the same time too, which is around 6:30 am and way more manageable for me.
What’s your bedtime routine like? Slow and easy? Chaos like ours? Do your kids share a room? Tell me all about it in the comments!
You can also #ShareYourBedtimeStory by adding the hashtag to your post about bedtime with me and The Company Story on Instagram! And you can read more inspiring mom’s bedtime stories with their families here.
Shop some of our favorite Company Store products here:
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This post was created in collaboration with The Company Store. Some product was provided to me for the purpose of this post. As always, all opinions expressed here are my own!
