Henry's Nightime Routine

About a week and a half ago we put into affect a consistent nighttime routine in hopes that it will help Henry wind down and get closer toward sleeping through the night once he is ready.  Sadly, I recently read that "sleeping through the night" is constituted by a 5 hour stretch of sleep....this is depressing on many levels and totally not in line with mamas sleeping through the night expectations....

Anyhow, we try to begin Henry's bedtime ritual no later than 8:30 pm.  My goal is to progressively move the start time earlier a bit week by week as we work toward that 7pm - 6am stretch of continuous sleep (ONE DAY!)

First up in the routine is a bath with Mommy.  We splish and we splash and we sing a few songs.  We also read  some of our made for the bath books.  Let me tell you how thrilling these 5 page books are.  Such riveting titles as "Da-Da," "Ma-Ma," and "Ba-Ba."  For real.  "Ma-Ma-Ma-Monkey.  Henry, can you say  M O N K E Y?"....

Next up, Henry gets passed to Daddy for dry off and diaper time.  This is his least favorite part of the routine and is usually met with his loudest cry of the day.  Who knew getting dried off could be so horrible?!

After we are dried off and diapered, we get our late evening feed in, which is followed by Henry's favorite step in the entire drill- his massage!  He gets rubbed down with his Mustella lotion from head to toe and then I flip him over for some tummy time and the best part of all- his back rub! 

After the massage, our little guy is usually super relaxed.  Depending on how zoned out he is at this point, we try to squeeze in 1-2 of his big boy books with Daddy.  We're really into seasonal titles right now such as "My First Thanksgiving" and "The Best Pumpkin"...

At this point we are all usually pooped out and ready to crawl in bed.  Sometimes if Henry is still wide awake we'll lay him in his crib to watch his mobile for bit.  I have no idea what makes this mobile so fascinating, but our little boy can seriously stare at the thing for at least 20 minutes just cooing away.  After mobile time, we all head to bed with typically another feeding squeezed in around 11pm and a prayer for at least 5 hours of "sleeping through the night" sleep!