We have a very well established bedtime routine that we follow every night. The only change is that we give her a bath every other night. Tonight as you can see from the pictures was by necessity a bath night. She is teaching herself to eat by her self and while it is great, it is really, really messy.(See Picture 1) What happens with the routine is that we give her a snack then we take her up and run the bath water.(See Picture 2) Once the water is just right we'll put her in the tub, wash her hair and everything else and then we'll let her splash around for as long as she likes or as long as we can stand. In the mean time the person who is not bathing her gets the PJ's, diaper cream, anti-tangle hair conditioner, comb, diaper and towel ready on our bed. When all the water has been drained from the tub we snatch up the slippery wet kid in a towel and take her to the bed where we lay her down and dry her off.(See Picture 3) Once she is dry we put on the diaper cream then the diaper. After the diaper comes the PJ's, and after the PJ's we spray her hair with the anti-tangle conditioner and we comb her hair.(See Picture 4) Now she is ready for her bedtime story, which recently is exclusively Janet's responsibility. Once the story has been read, Janet gets Madeline to lay her head on her shoulder and we say a prayer.(See Picture 5) After the prayer has been said, I try to get Madeline to come to me, but we have not had much success over the last couple of weeks. Then I say goodbye as you see in the video.(See Video) After I left, Janet lays Madeline down and places the blanket on top of her. Finally we walk out and enjoy the rest of our evening and see Madeline between 5:00am and 6:00am the next day. What a life! I believe that this routine and everything else that we, but especially Janet does the keep Madeline's life normal has made it possible for us to travel so well over the last few months. Kudos the Janet the full time mom for doing such an awesome job in sometimes less the ideal circumstances. I give her a 5 on a scale of 0-4 for her performance. My boss said a 4 means "walks on water," I can't give Janet anything less than a 5 for "already to be translated."
