Routines are important for young children, but as we keep realizing, the routines are constantly shifting. We're back to the yogurt and videos before bed, as Alice claims she needs a "bed-night snack" whenever we tell her it is bath time. We're OK with this because we just start the bedtime routine earlier, so even though she feels like she's delaying, she still gets in bed about the same time as before. Also, she's been doing a great job eating cereal for breakfast lately, and the bedtime snack is a good way to try and get some more meat on her bones. The only downside is that she gets so absorbed in the video that she has to be constantly reminded to take a bite (or sometimes we just spoon it into her while she watches).
We're happy to have found a program that we like and she likes: Caillou. It's a show based on some French-Canandian books that airs on PBS. It's realistic, tells a coherent story with a good lesson, and doesn't shift scenes too much. Each episode is about seven minutes long, which works well because it's long enough for Alice to learn to pay attention, but short enough that we have a good stopping point. Although Alice often whines to watch Cars, she doesn't really get it and just asks "Where's Mater?" the whole time. We used to have her watch Thomas and Friends episodes, but those were longer and she had a little more trouble relating to it because all the characters were trains. Caillou is a four-year old with a younger sister, a mom and a dad, and has experiences that are closer to Alice's world.
In other news, Simon is finally slipping into a nice routine of going to bed around 8:30. He sleeps through the nights most of the time, and just requires a little pacifier maintenance now and then. Things are looking up! We just might survive this two-child gig after all.
