Bedtime Ritual

No real news to add, but I hadn’t posted in a while. Since Mikaela’s bedtime ritual has been pretty much the same for over a year now, I thought I’d record it here for posterity.

We start by moving to the office/playroom and wind down with about 15 minutes of Sesame Street. I undress Mikaela for her bath and send her off to “Go find your bubbles.” Usually, she runs straight for the bathroom (she knows her bubbles are in her bath). If she’s feeling ornery, she’ll try to take a naked lap around the house. I put her in her bath with her collection of bath toys while Miriam gets her pajamas ready. Mikaela really likes her bath, and enjoys playing with bath toys, splashing water, and even sometimes rolling over on her tummy in the tub and “swimming”. Her only bad habit is that she also likes to drink her bath water. We’re working on that one.

Lately, she’s started washing herself with a cute little baby bath poof with a puppy dog head on it. She calls it her “poop”. She washes various parts of her body as I ask her to – her arms, legs, chin, tummy, etc. I do her back for her. When she’s done washing, she’ll play a bit more. When she decides it’s time to get out, she stands up in the tub and says “Tock, tock.”

That’s because the first time we bathed her in the big bath tub, when I got her out I “shook her off” a bit by swaying her side-to-side and singing “Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock goes the baby clock.” So when she says “tock tock” it’s time for the baby clock part of the ritual. From there she goes straight into a towel held open by Miriam. Miriam wraps her in the towel and lays her back. Mikaela says, “Honey” and gives Miriam and I each a kiss. If it’s a hair-washing night, we go from there to the kitchen sink to wash her hair (which she doesn’t like AT ALL). Then it’s back to the playroom. We turn off the light and she lays down on the couch there and watches a bit more Sesame Street while she puts on her pajamas. After a few minutes relaxing that way, it’s off to bed. Usually Miriam takes her up and reads for a bit – she seems to have far more success getting Mikaela down for bed than me. If Mikaela’s having a rough night getting down, I’ll go upstairs and hold her and sing Hebrew songs to her, which tends to relax her. For whatever reason, Mikaela won’t let me read to her and won’t let Miriam sing to her.

I’m not sure how much longer we’re going to be able to continue the same ritual that we’ve used since she was six months old, but we’re enjoying it and it’s working well, so we’ll hang onto it as long as we can.