Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Night Time Schedule

So, we have decided to put Benton on a night time schedule. Our schedule goes like:
5:30pm: We pick him up from day care.
6:00pm: Watch Paula Dean on Food Network while Benton nurses.
6:30pm: Dinner time for mommy and daddy
7:30pm: Reading time. I try to read him a book everynight. He is starting to enjoy looking at the pictures.
8:00pm: Bath Time for Benton. Mommy gets the bath ready while Daddy undresses Benton. Mommy gives Benton a bath--sometimes we wash him with soap and other days we just put him in the tub and give him a sponge bath. After his wash down, Mommy hands Benton to Daddy and Daddy wraps him in his towel and dries him off while Mommy cleans up the tub. Mommy rubs Benton down with lotion. We put a diaper on and comb his hair and then its feeding time!
8:30pm: Benton's mid-evening snack and bed time. He usually falls asleep while nursing or soon after. Sometimes he will stay awake until 9 or so, but he really fights going to sleep if he waits that long. He usually stays in our arms until we are ready to go to bed. (Bad habit, I know!)
10/10:30pm: Gently wake Benton up for one last fed before Mommy and Daddy go to bed. We have started to cut this fed down by 10 mins. and Benton doesn't seem to mind since he is halfway alseep anyway. After his late-night snack, Mommy puts him in his crib--changes his diaper (he doesn't like this part very much, but he has gotten good at putting himself back to sleep) and we swaddle him. Then it's lights out for the family.

Hopefully Benton will enjoy being this new found schedule and we are starting to like this schedule as well. If only we can get him to sleep through the night without swaddling him, we will be good! We found out yesterday that if he is on his stomach, he will soothe himself to sleep. He's just like his parents--a stomach sleeper! He does enjoy sleeping on his stomach on top of either mine or Beau's chest. We also adore it as well. We love our little man and fight over who's spending more time with him at night..of course we take turns.

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