Owls and larks.

I have documented previously the ways in which my parenting style and attitude has changed over the years. Some of it in reaction to changing ages of children, some due to my own ideas changing a lot (hey I was the woman who couldn’t wait for them to be three so I could pack them off to pre school and ‘get my life back’!) and mostly simply because we are finding the rhythm that suits us as individuals and as a family and ever increasingly marching along to the beat of our own drum. Oh and cos in the main I quite like an easy life 😉

So way back when I realised I was about to become the proud owner of my very own baby and that actually the sum of my own experience with babies was scowling at them when they came into places I worked and were noisy or dropped wotsits on the floor out of their pushchairs I set about researching this new ‘project’. I read books, joined newsgroups, went to ante-natal classes and hung around in Mothercare. The consensus seemed to be that to survive the coming ordeal what I needed to have was A Routine.

Routines for feeding, routines for changing, routines for sleeping. Routine, routine, routine. I was comforted by this. I knew routines – I worked off twelve week planners counting down to Christmas at Bhs, I worked on Mid Season Sales in January and July. At Scout Shops I knew that come May we would be selling toilet tents and flysheets and the proficiency scout badges flying off the shelves would be ‘scout camping’ and ‘camp cook’ in the summer and ‘snowman building scout’ in the winter. I was used to getting up at 7.30, leaving the house at 8, getting to work at 8.30 and having a cup of tea before starting work at 9. Mid morning tea at 10.30 and lunch at 1pm. More tea around 4pm and home at 5pm. Routine, I could do.

I would be lying if I said I’d ever been a fully paid up Gina Ford-ite. I never got the hang of leaving children in the dark alone and seven minute showers were so not my thing but come six months old both of my babies were firmly into the ‘breakfast at 8am, nap at 10am, lunch at midday, tea at 5pm, bath at 6pm and bed at 7pm regime’. Over the years almost all of it has slipped away but Bed At Seven remained the order of the day.

I liked Bed At Seven. It justified the first glass of wine coinciding with 7.30pm, allowed a bath in peace, a couple of hours of evening with Ady, dinner at leisure without children poking at things on our plates and asking to try it, what was it, what animal did it come from and proclaiming it ‘ewwww’ if they tried it and didn’t like it. And frankly after twelve hours full on parenting I’d had enough by 7pm.

Of course Bed At Seven had it’s downsides – like Out Of Bed Again At Six – and in the case of Scarlett it was frequently In And Out Of Bed Again At Various Hours Throughout The Night.

Anyway, over the last month or so due to various late nights for other reasons like not being home, having friends round, lighter evenings and general slackness 😉 Bed At Seven has somewhat gone off the rails. The upside is that they are both sleeping later – it’s taken a few weeks for them to get into that habit – at first they were simply waking at the usual early time and being horrid cos they were tired but for the last week or so we’ve been packing them off to their rooms somewhere between 7 and 8 and letting them get on with it. Usually they will both look at books, play with soft toys or in Davies’ case lie in bed and draw but they are asleep before 9pm and sleeping through until 7.30-8am the next morning.

So I have this plan, for a new routine 😉