Bed times & efficiency?... Blogging Marathon 2014 Post 27

The one thing that I really am not happy with this house move (amongst the others) is the heavier parenting load on me. The husband gets back by 8 ish on most evenings, as late as 9:30 pm on days he goes to the gym, which is every alternate day. So, once the kids are back from school I am with them till they go to sleep. Earlier  I had a break, at least on one day of the week when I went for my language classes, but now even that is not there. There are days when they are just going off to sleep by the time the husband comes, and sometimes he says he will put them to sleep. Those are very rare occasions.

I can mostly empathise, he is just back from a long drive, tired, hungry, etc. So I don't demand, but even weekends are spent playing some computer game or with office mails, and when I ask him to put them to sleep, while I can finish some other work, and there are times he does not do it, which makes me more disappointed than angry actually. The kids adore him and this is a great way to spend some time with them too. The kids are used to a bedtime story before they sleep. When their father is putting them to sleep, Lil G even selects a book in English for him, as Daddy, you not know Nederlands, na! and hands it over to him. Big G reads on her own, sometimes asking for meanings of words.

The only thing is and perhaps a natural thing with kids is their curiosity and chatter-boxiness, so if I read a sentence, there is a whole paragraph full of explanation and reasoning and anecdotes and connections made on the matter and shared immediately. So with starts and stops and long deviations, we finally finish a story. It is fun on most days, but can get a bit too much when I have my eyes on the clock regarding some deadline or pending work. As was today, a day where I seemed to be falling behind with my timelines. 

We went in to sleep at 8 or so, and then we had a story session for 30 minutes. Post lights off, neither of them would settle. Luckily I had my dinner so I was not hungry-angry, which can bring out the worst in me. Suddenly there were some 'aches and pains'. I normally call out and ask them in advance but hadn't today, so jumped out of bed, put the lights on, ear drops for one, another wanted me to itch her back. Then there was some territorial fights of whose creeping closer to whom. Lil G turned her pillow over like 10 times - something about sleeping on the cooler side. On days like today, when they take aeons  to sleep, I can barely hide my impatience.  Had I also closed my eyes and waited for them to sleep, I am sure I wouldn't have written today's post. Maybe I should walk out once lights are off, but I will miss out on seeing them succumb to sleep and kiss their cheeks and smell their breaths. Such crazy trade-offs in life, I say.