Bed Time Ritual With My Prince

If there exists a sleeping beauty in world, if has to be a child. And as they say - beauty lies in the eyed of beholder, the beholder is none other than a mother. Also, elders say that more the baby sleeps, more it becomes healthy.

The tiny angels become irritated and throw worst of their tantrums when they are either hungry or have not slept well. Getting the child to sleep specially at night is the biggest project every mother has to complete almost daily. The kid would sleep any-time and anywhere but when we would want them to go to bed, they magically acquire endless energy of no-where.

My three year old son has his own share of tantrums before going to bed.

1. The first and foremost requirement to prepare him for the sleep is - everyone in the family must be asleep or gone to bed with their lights switched off.

2. He then makes two to three rounds in between our and his grandmother’s room.

He comes to me and asks for a story. I narrate a story having some animal - dog or lion or turtle or donkey or some other animal of his choice. All my stories end with the animal realizing some of his mistake or saying sorry to friends and parents or agreeing to be a good friend or promising to share with everyone. My sweetie pie then says that he is already a good boy and shares things with his friends.

3. He wishes good night and runs back to the grand mom's room. Recently, he also plays some game for one to two minutes in his grand mom's mobile after getting in bed with her. Sometimes, he goes through one of his books in the light of heater.

4. Most of the time, he sleeps there only and comes to our room only if he wakes up at night. Whenever he wakes up at night, shifting of rooms is a must for him. He needs dadi (grandmother) if sleeping with me and vice versa.

And yes, one cannot dare and speak when he wake up at night. Someone else other than the person he need opens his mouth and the little kid get furious an starts crying so loud that I think neighbours must be able to hear him!

It's a delight to watch him sleeping.  I have several pictures of him sleeping. I have even managed to capture him smiling while in sound sleep! Those are the dearest ones to me. The sight of his sound sleep makes all worries and problems vanish in void.  Sometimes, he not only smiles but laugh out laugh while sleeping. The best is that he even responds and laughs more when talk to him during that time.

PS - we have stopped putting diaper now. But yes, when we were using them, good diaper which helped keeping the skin dry did helped him sleep better. At least he did not wake because of wet bed. On very rare occasions when he does not agree to go wash-room on waking up, he sometimes wets the bed and asks - "Hun! How is everything wet?” When we reply that he did it, he replies innocently - "Ricky thought, I do not know how all this became wet!”

Written in response to Indi blogger campaign – Bedtime Rituals