If you have found your way to my blog you will no doubt follow plenty of fantastic book bloggers and enthusiasts. Today I would like to introduce one of my favourites and my first guest blogger, Kim aka Book Bairn, whose instagram is full of great recommends and LOADS of exciting book parcels! Here she shares what works for her little family at bedtime. Enjoy!
I think most parents will have heard the old adage that perfecting your bedtime routine will help your child sleep well. Well… in our experience your child probably needs to be sleeping well before the consistency of a bedtime routine really means a whole lot. But that is a much longer story!
BookBairn is now two and we have been doing the same bedtime routine for about a year now and most nights she falls asleep well. Having said all that we are expecting a new baby in April and I’m sure her routine will be disrupted and will change to accommodate her little brother too!
Daddy Arrives Home
BookBairn’s Daddy works an hour’s commute from home and usually walks in the door just in time to warm some milk and snuggle with his girl on the sofa in front of one her favourite Cbeebies shows. We usually watch TV or something on the iPad for fifteen minutes or so and then BookBairn tells her Daddy about that day’s highlights (with less and less input from me as she learns to say more herself!).
Toothbrushing and PJs
We used to do bath every night before bed but as BookBairn suffers from eczema we have cut her baths to an afternoon activity a couple of times a week. So instead, Daddy takes her to wash her face, brush her teeth, apply her coconut oil/eczema cream and get into her PJs.
Favourites Shelf
If you pop over to our blog or follow our social media you will see that BookBairn has two long shelves packed with her favourite and current reads. I try to change this regularly because whilst I know reading the same story over and over again is beneficial for her development it can get a bit tiresome for Daddy and I. We always let her choose from the shelf, and choose who is to read the book. More often than not, it’s ‘mummy’s knees’ but sometimes Daddy gets a turn and sometimes now she reads ‘on her own’. We usually read two stories and then have cuddles and night night kisses.
Cuddles and Song
Usually, BookBairn cuddles her favourite toy in her daddy’s arms and he sings her a lullaby of her choice. He then says something along the lines of “Mummy and Daddy love you and we are right next door if you need us. Sweet dreams” and then sings Edelweiss. Daddy then switches on the mobile above the cot which also plays Edelweiss.
Drifting off to sleep…
Usually there is then a little chat between BookBairn and her toy lion, Louis (who goes everywhere with her). And more recently we’ve heard her singing Twinkle Twinkle to him over the baby monitor.
And that’s it! We cross our fingers and even now (after she’s slept through the night nearly every night for over a year) I still pray that she will drift off and sleep all night.
To see our current favourite bedtime reads please check out this link: http://bookbairn.blogspot.co.uk/p/favourites-shelf.html
Thanks Kim! It’s so lovely to hear about how other people enjoy this special time of the day (and then, all being well, breathe a huge sigh of relief and get ready to enjoy some grown up time!) If you have enjoyed this, make sure you pop over to her blog and have a read through some of her other posts, she’s a great blogger and you are sure to find loads of great picture book recommendations (there are some links below to help you find her).
About Kim: Kim lives in Scotland with her daughter, nicknamed BookBairn, husband and much-adored pet rabbit and is expecting baby number two in Spring. She has always enjoyed reading books, a passion inherited from her librarian-mother, and hopes to pass on this love of books to her little BookBairn. A teacher on career-break to spend more time with BookBairn, she is passionate about baby-led reading where little ones have free to reign to choose what they read and make mountains of book mess throughout the house.
http://bookbairn.blogspot.co.uk/
Social media links:
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/BookBairn/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/BookBairn
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/bookbairn/
Recently it was my little magpie’s birthday (she is known as the magpie because she is constantly hopping around and has always had an eye for anything sparkly). It had been an exceptionally busy week with me going back to school after the summer holidays and her starting at her new school nursery and so I had had to be very organised with all the birthday planning and it wasn’t until less than a week to go that I realised I had almost forgotten something very important- her birthday book. She couldn’t have a birthday without a book so I started to think about all the things on my ‘To buy’ list which she might like and scrolling through instagram and all my favourite book accounts to see if there was something she would love. As a looked down my feed I saw the ‘Brambly Hedge’ account pop up with ‘Autumn Story’ and I knew it would be perfect.
As it happened I bought the ‘A year in Brambly Hedge’ box set. The little magpie is very interested in seasons at the moment and so the fact that there is a story for each season is perfect. But also there was a little selfish part of me that wanted the books for myself because I remembered reading them and being in love with the intricate illustrations when I was little. For anyone who has not come across these books before they are as quintessentially British as any Beatrix Potter or AA Milne story. They follow the lives of a community of mice, shrews and voles who live in the hedgerows, trees and bushes of the English countryside.
The author has taken time to give each of the characters its own personality and they are often featured across the different books so you feel like you get to know them a little bit. They have quite a lot of text in each book but all the stories are exciting- a surprise birthday picnic for Spring, a riverside wedding in Summer, a little mouse lost in the woods in autumn (my favourite) and a Snow Ball in winter- but it’s the illustrations that really draw you in. They are so detailed and as a result the more you look at them the more you notice. What I loved when I was little, and still love now, are the intricate cross sections of the trees where you feel like you can look inside their houses and see the little creatures busy in their homes. I spent many hours looking at these and they still fascinate me today.
As English animal stories go, these books have all the warmth of a tea party at Pooh corner, mixed in with the adventures of Peter Rabbit but because they were written much more recently (the 1980s) the language is easier for our modern day children to understand. If you are a fan of AA Milne and Beatrix Potter, these should be on your radar! It’s also worth mentioning that they are the perfect size for little fingers as they are small hardbacks which all come in a presentation box. They look so lovely on their shelf- is it just me or does everyone find a set of books like this really satisfying?
alittlebookhabit 