This week I am excited to be the Monday morning
snapshot on PAIL Bloggers (a
community resource for what comes next).
Even though I do not post as often as I wish to on here. I get a lot of ideas through the website and
strongly encourage anyone that is parenting after infertility to check it
out.
Without further ado:
The daily grind can get tedious
from time to time. Get home, make dinner, play, go to bed, wake up,
work/daycare, rinse and repeat. Well, to help combat the daily grind, I
try to soak in Ava and our precious moments during our nightly routine.
I have always done the bedtime
routine mostly because of breastfeeding and also
because Ben was scared of giving Ava a bath. At first I loved it and then
I got tired of having to do it every night but now I realized how much fun it
is.
It is my special time with Ava
where nothing else matters but her. We start anytime before 7:00 PM
depending on how tired she is, how late we ate dinner, etc. We first
start with a bath. We play with a couple rubber duckies including one on
a boat that winds up and spins around the tub. She giggles when the ducky
runs into her leg or foot. We finish up and I wrap her up in her Minnie
Mouse towel and lay her down on her bedroom floor. I put nighttime lotion
on her while making sounds or silly faces getting her to giggle. I grab A Very
Hungry Caterpillar, Snuggle Puppy, or one of our other books. I read it
to her while we rock and she plays with her lovey. Next, I take her
prayer dice and say the prayer that was rolled. Finally, we nurse and I
just stare and try to soak it all in. I see how much she has grown.
How long her hair has gotten. Man, I need to clip her fingernails again.
Before laying her down, I rock her for a couple minutes after she has
finished nursing. I lay her in her crib making sure she has her lovey and
I tell her I love her and out the door I go. She falls asleep within 20
minutes.
I check on her before I go to bed
and just stare again in amazement that she is real and she is ours.
Hi from PAIL! Such an adorable picture :) I miss the last snuggle after nursing but before putting my son to bed for the night. Now he isn't nursing he'd rather play so most nights I get a quick hug and a kiss before I lay him in his crib :)
ReplyDeleteHi! I know that last snuggle is the best.
DeleteHey Kelly, I'm wondering what time you wake up in the morning to get her up for the day? Because Mike and I both work, the boys are up between 6 - 6:30 am every day and then by the end of the day (after about 2 naps each) they are so tired they have to go down by 6:30 pm or they start to come undone! I really wish they could stay up just a little longer so I could make dinner and we could all sit together.
ReplyDeleteShe usually wakes up between 6:30-7. I was starting the routine around 6:30-6:45 and getting her asleep by 7-7:10 but the month of July has totally thrown us off schedule. I hope to get her back on that schedule this next week. She sleeps morning/afternoon and then sometimes sneaks in late afternoon nap on our 20 minute drive home.
DeleteBut I know what you mean... you get home and it is time to make dinner and then it is baths/bedtime with no family time in the middle. I use my crockpot and premake casserols so all I have to do is throw it in the oven alot.