Night time routine

Here is a glimpse into a typical evening routine with Colin:

At 6:30pm,  Colin can be found in his high chair, getting ready to eat. I'll give him a snack to munch on while I fix his "main course". Tonight his snack was avocados and puffs. Once the main course is ready ( tonight it was homemade sweet potatoes), I feed him with a spoon. I don't dare let him feed himself off the spoon yet, as it will end up in an even bigger mess!

Once Colin is done with his dinner, he goes straight to the bath tub, because he needs it! Food is usually all over his face, tummy, arms and legs.
Mommy gets in the bathtub with Colin and gives him a good scrub down. Then I'll get out and let him play a bit on his own, with me sitting nex to the tub of course!

By now, it's about 7:15pm, Colin is now clean and we snuggle and play on my bed. I attempt to read him a book, but most of the time it just ends up in his mouth!

7:30pm- bottle time! Colin gets his last bottle of the day. Sometimes I'll feed it to him, sometimes he's a wiggle worm and won't stay in my lap anymore so I prop him up on the pillow and he feeds himself.
 I'm starting to miss those days when Colin would  lay sweetly in my arms while I fed him his bottle, those days seem to be gone :(  I especially miss when he'd doze on his last bottle and I'd hold him against me for several minutes just enjoying his sleeping body against my chest.

7:45pm- I take Colin upstairs to his room, put a fresh diaper on him, his pj's, lay him in his bed, pop the pacifier in his mouth, turn on his jungle music from his crib toy, give him one last good night kiss and out the door I go! I go downstairs and turn the monitor on, he'll coo to himself for about 10 minutes and then he's out for the night!

The early bed time is great, because it gives me a few hours to myself before I go to bed. However, it does limit my nighttime activities. When he was younger, it was much easier to go out to dinner and get back home at 8 or 9pm when he was going to bed at 10. I can manage an early dinner and feed Colin his dinner at the restaurant, but I prefer to just be home. Luckily another perk of living out at the lake is that if Dad or Gloria are home when Colin goes to bed and I do want to have a date with Evan or run some late night errands, I can just go and Dad is here in case Colin wakes up and needs anything. Not too bad!