Harry's Blog

I mentioned earlier today our difficulty with the twins' sleep pattern at the moment.

So today when I brought the babes home from their child minder at 2pm I decided to try something different. Normally they go to bed, stripped to their vests¹ and eventually have an afternoon nap.

On mornings at home they go for their nap after lunch at around twelve thirty. On child minder days it's just after two in the afternoon. They tend to be more grumpy after those later naps.

Anyway, I'm digressing here. So today I decided no nap. If they wanted a sleep they could have one on the sofa. And so we got home and started to play.

It wasn't long before our little boy bumped into something and got upset. I asked him if he was tired and wanted a sleep. "Yesh dadda", he said. So I lay him down on the sofa with a blanket and he dropped off to sleep really quickly.

Our daughter, bless her, spent the next hour playing quietly and saying "shhhh" if she thought I was being too noisy². So after an hour I woke our son up with a drink and a biscuit. He wasn't overly happy about it.

But...

I have to say the mood of both of them all afternoon and right up to bath and bedtime³ was really good. Our son in particular seemed much happier than usual getting towards bedtime. And our daughter was her usual bonkers self.

And they went right to sleep at bedtime tonight. No escaping from their bedroom and running up and down the landing giggling, as sometimes happens.

I'm going to hold off claiming to "rock!" for the moment. We'll see how long they sleep in the morning first. But I have to say, despite getting less child-free work time this afternoon the day actually felt smoother and less stressful.

Perhaps it was beginners luck and it will be different tomorrow. But I'm certainly willing to try this approach again. And well done to the twinnies for putting up with such paternal experimentation.

_{¹We discovered recently they get too hot going to sleep fully clothed and wake up very very grumpy.
²She seems to think she's her twin brother's mummy.
³Beginning at 6pm because we're not chavs.}