Little bear's bathtime routine

When we first got home from the hospital with little bear, we set up a routine. From the very first night we went upstairs around 7pm, changed him, bathed him, fed him while OH read a story and then kissed him good night and left him to sleep. He often went to sleep during his night time feed in those days.

However little bear is a tough negotiator and uses any stop gap and distraction to create a precedent. So the evening routine is now somewhat extended.

First of all OH takes little bear upstairs to brush his teeth and wash. Then they go up to the top bedroom 'to look out of the window' which originally was a distraction technique which has expanded to include playing with mummy's musical jewellery box and contents, unscrewing and putting back together a duck headed walking stick, naming the parts of a sword (a lovely, blunt, faux replica I got for OH one year), finding the naughty ring (it is a costume jewellery ring which OH is adept at palming) and tonight also including playing Santa games on Daddy's laptop.

I have to go to the toilet at this point, little bear insists that I go as soon as they have come down from the top bedroom. On bath night there is a bath, otherwise this stage is skipped. There then follows a full on battle to get him into his pyjamas when he can be either defiant or playfully mischievous but he is not co-operative and OH has to deal with this bit at the moment with an iffy shoulder. Then he chooses two stories (negotiated up from one, we managed to put a lid on three), and then Ratatouille (with OH's voice) sings Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill and then the alphabet forwards and backwards. Then it is vitamins, and kisses and lights out. Recently the only way to settle him without hysteria was for me to give him a sing. It started off with one song. I lost count of how many tonight. I always start off with Scarborough Fair, followed by Johnny Todd and Molly Malone. Tonight I was scraping the barrel of my memory for any sort of songs by the end.

Then OH and I stagger downstairs. We are doing something wrong.