It can’t just be me can it? I am pretty sure it’s not!

Now before you get the wrong idea this is PG rated. When I am referring to bed time rituals this has nothing to do with me and the Pants, but the weird and wonderful things my children try to do to put off going to sleep of an evening. After the evening story has been read and we say ‘time for bed’ the process begins.

Now I don’t know about you but brushing ones teeth usually isn’t an exciting thing to do, it’s essential to have good oral hygiene and the buck stops there. In our home it creates laughter, pulling faces and mucking around, well at least in the children’s bathroom. To a child, it’s game on! They are quite liberal with the distribution of toothpaste and for some reason the lid is never quite the same as it lays open with no chance of ever shutting again, with clumps of toothpaste all around the lid. No one wants to rinse the toothpaste down the sink either and this is left for the cleaning fairies, i.e me. Like anyone knows this stuff has grip and requires a fair bit of scrubbing and elbow grease to get it to budge.

Early intervention is required to settle down the pack and into bed they go. The free range child can be heard banging and clanging around the room, on investigation we are told, ‘I’ve still got work to do’ and the blocks are back out and assembled. We resettle and retire back to the lounge room. 15 minutes later he makes another appearance, not taking his eyes off the television, with a very interesting story of the day’s events, straying to what he might do as a career when older to worrying about world hunger. Of course, sent back to bed with strict instructions, that it is time for bed and not to come back out. The Princess arrives out with some beautiful artwork, splendid! and we thought she had been asleep the whole last hour. The boomerang behaviour continues with ‘I need one more drink of water’ to ‘I didn’t have my fish oil this morning, should I have it now?’

Meanwhile, The informer is our best sleeper, absolutely exhausted from the day that has passed and keeping everything in check, we know if an appearance is made, by her, she is genuinely unwell and a trip to the medicine cabinet or emergency department is on the cards.

After all members are settled I then proceed to fall asleep on the lounge for an hour or so. The Pants wakes me at regular intervals to inform me that ‘you are going to get a sore neck if you lie like that’ and ‘I don’t know why you just don’t go to bed.’ The best one is ‘you’re not even watching this are you?’ the age old response from me is, ‘I am just resting my eyes’ is rubbish and he knows it all too well.

I eventually shower and crawl into bed to get ready to do it all again tomorrow, so for now, sweet dreams to all those beautiful families out there, who are not so different to mine.