Bedtime Reading

We're great ones for routine in this house.  Ever since the kids were babies, we've had the same bedtime routine of bath, drink of milk, story, bed - although nowadays, I don't have to sing them to sleep (thankfully) - and we only deviate from the norm when we're on our hols.  And as a rule, they go to sleep fairly soon after that - around 8ish.  Only occasionally do they have nights when they can't settle and we still hear them mucking around upstairs after 8.30pm.

However, just lately, the routine has become disrupted.  For a while now, Jacob has preferred to read his own bedtime story; because he doesn't like being on his own upstairs, this still takes place in the same location where Sam is having a story read to him.  Occasionally, he'll curl up and listen to the story, but mostly he prefers to read something of his own.

Sam, for the most part, has been happy to be read to, apart from when he's going through his "tablet phases", where he wants to "listen" to an interactive story on the tablet - we have quite a lot of these, mostly Doctor Seuss stories, and as he is a whizz on the tablet, we aren't required to sit with him while he listens.  But he too is starting to want to read by himself - probably because he very much wants to be like his big brother.

Slowly the bedtime routine is being eroded.  And eroded further still by the fact that something has gone wrong with the mixer tap in the bath, reducing the hot water flow to a trickle - quelle horreur, no bath!!  They've been having showers, instead, and I get the feeling that they're really enjoying this as it gives them much more time to read later.

So the only thing remaining from the routine of 7 years is the warm milk drink.  This is one thing that they don't seem to want to do without, even in the summer.  And I'm strangely hopeful that it continues, even if it feels like something a character in the Secret Seven would do......