Daily routines

It's been far too long since I last posted here and things have moved on a pace since I last did. Trevor is, thankfully, taking on a little more responsibility which is making life less frought. And Ainsworth is about to become mobile as his shuffling across the floor is definitely getting quicker! Anyway, to things of 'routine'...

I know, from teaching children, that they are anything but predictable, and I've always liked this slight element of uncertainty in the classroom. It keeps me on my toes and stops life being boring. However, being a fairly organised sort of person, I like routines and a little bit of predictability. These are both things I seem to have had to give up almost completely with the arrival of Ainsworth. As fast as I try to establish some sort of routine to the day, so he goes and changes it!

I really liked to transition to bottle feeding once I was set at feeding at 7am, 11am, 2pm and 6pm with three forty five minute naps at 10am, 1pm and 4pm. That didn't last long as solid foods were introduced. Then for a while we settled into waking at 5am, breakfast at 7am, snack at 10.30am, lunch at 12, afternoon bottle at 2.30pm, tea at 4.30pm, bath at 6pm and bottle before bed at 6.30pm with two naps a day of varying lengths.

Now, at 8 months, the feeding routine is still quite similar, but times can vary by up to an hour without adverse effects! It is, however the sleep patterns that seem completely random at the moment and this lack of predictabilty makes life quite challenging at times - especially for someone who likes to arrive on time for things! The bedtime routine is fantastic and very predictable, but the morning can begin any time between 5am and 8.30am... and the later he gets up, the better his mood during the day, so perhaps we can be forgiven for trying to make him go back to sleep when he wakes at 5am! I just wish we could work out what to do to make the mornings more predictable, but I guess that would make life quite boring.