I’ve had a lot of people ask me about our bedtime routines, and how we transitioned our kids from their upstairs rooms to their downstairs ones after the renovation. Since my kids are (newly) three and (almost) one and a half, it’s a little tricky to get bedtime done “right”.

So it made total sense to post about this when I heard about the #mysleepstyle campaign for Wayfair.com for Better Sleep Month this month! Kids can hate bedtime, and so I’m posting today about how we make bedtime go a little more smoothly at our house!

First, I try not to rush a bedtime. In a perfect world, our routine is pretty long. We give the kids a bath, brush their teeth, have some snuggle time (usually reading a book, telling a story, or sometimes a bit of wind-down tv or movie time, and singing a song or two) and then kisses and goodnight. We try not to drag it out forever, because requests for “sing one more song” or “lay with me a while” can lead to another 30 minutes that they should be sleeping but they aren’t. I like for them to fall asleep on their own if possible, so that they can do it later.

Second, my kids always sleep with a swaddle. It was never stuffed animals or pacifiers or anything with them… they just love their swaddles. So I have to make sure they’re in their beds with them, or there wouldn’t be any sleep in my house.

Third, we have “white noise” in their rooms for naps and bedtimes. Depending on the season, it could be a humidifier, a fan, an air purifier, or just a sound machine, but there’s always some white noise. Honestly, I don’t know if they would sleep without it, but I know that in case we’re watching tv too loudly or one of them wakes in the night, it keeps them from hearing every single sound in the house and waking them up.

When we moved them into their “big kid rooms” downstairs, we just made sure they had all the comforts of their old rooms, and they transitioned just fine. EK requests for us to leave her door open (which we typically close after she’s asleep) but that’s her only thing that’s different. J also has his “big boy bed” already in his room (he’s still sleeping in the crib) so that when he’s ready for the transition to a real bed, his room won’t change much. When we moved EK to a real bed, it was pretty tough, because she was also changing rooms entirely. Looking back, it might’ve been too much of a transition at once. There was a lot of getting up and down and just never going to sleep and moving her back into her old room just so she’d go to sleep. We weren’t very firm about it, come to think of it!

Well, there you have it! As a mom, that’s #mysleepstyle! Our kids have a routine and a room they love, and often, bedtime goes smoothly for us. What do you do with your kids? Do they have a routine like ours, or a lovey they can’t be without?