Grumpy hour before bed

[TheCountessOlenska]

What do you do with your babies/toddlers when they get tired and grumpy at the end of the day?

I have another hour to go and have resorted to:

A. taking off all her clothes and

B. Giving her the ribbon drawer!!

Earlier bed! DD has tea at 5pm and is in bed by 5.45. Asleep by six. Wine time!

If she's anything like DS, earlier bedtime just leads to waking up 3-4 hours later all refreshed and hungry and wide awake with no hope of getting them back to sleep

We used to do bath and then whatever was left of CBeebies bedtime hour :)

Octaviapink - I like your thinking! In fact after I posted I decided she was too grumpy so took her to bed and she was asleep by 6!

I am just worried that as Bertie said she will be awake by 10 - I may go to bed now and get a couple of hours in!

She is normally fine till 7 but she missed her nap.

Not really got into cbeebies yet (will she like it at age 1?)- will check out the bedtime hour!

Thanks!

save whatever her favourite toy is for this time of day, if she likes her bath, extend it as long as poss., do a slow and steady getting dressed, lullaby, milk etc - an hour can pass without to much fuss if these things go ok. If she has an occasional really bad time, 30mins earlier on her bedtime shouldn't matter in terms of her wake up time.

I rely on DH keeping my DS amused for half an hour - which usually involves him throwing him around, holding him upside down and tickling him which DS seems to thrive on. After all the excitement he's more than happy to have a cuddle with mummy for 10-15 minutes of quiet time before bath at 6.30 and bed at 7ish. On occasions i have resorted to bathing him early though - especially if he's poorly grumpy (like now).

Depends on whether dh is away or not. If he'll be home at a good time (i.e. before 7pm) I'll bath early and the dh gets to do cuddles and stories before bed. If he's away, I keep tea very simple, go for a little walk afterwards and then bath and straight to bed.

I'm less bothered about routine than I was with ds1 and so we tend to see how it goes.