Bedtime routine

Since it's so hard for me to keep up on blogging as it is, it's hard for me to break out of recording the bare minimum - events and travel - which is sad because there's so much deeper and day-to-day that I wish I took the trouble to record as well.

I've found that life at 35 is incredibly full and bulging at the edges. This makes life exciting and great, but exhausting and makes me choosier and choosier about how I spend my time. Interestingly though it makes the "downtime" also incredibly sweet and deliberate.

Anyway, tonight I wanted to take a minute to share my recent deliberate experiment in downtime and how well it's working. It's the bedtime routine.

The bedtime routine around here is constantly undergoing various iterations and experiments. Sometimes it stretches into incredibly patience-trying weeks that don't work. And sometimes things just...work. Since things are working I wanted to record that.

Every night each kid gets a "tuck in." During the tuck in we talk about three things:

1) Happies for the day (and sads too if they want) - both the kid's and mine, which often turns a sour feeling into a sweet one as we recognize the great things about each day
2) A service we each did that day - these are often pretty insignificant but I love keeping service in our minds
3) A memory - this has helped me to share more of myself with them and has helped us revel in past awesome, or insignificant but meaningful, experiences

That's it! I'm finding that both of us (me and the kid) are edified by this format. And, since Haven mentions tuck in as one of her happies almost every night, it seems to be working.

Hooray!