Up till now, Bedtime has been two separate tasks. 1) get Nate down and 2) get Lily down. One of us takes the first task (it's always Cindy, but was exclusively me for a while), which mostly involves rocking and/or feeding him down. The other person works with Lily, which involves reading books, tests of patience and a more than a little cajoling.
Recently, we decided to begin consolidating bedtime. Nate's hinting that he's ready to sit for books and Lily was displaying jealousy at (what she saw as) the favorable treatment her mother gave Nate at bedtime.
So, Nate was brought into his sisters room for bedtime books.
We read two great Dr Seuss books that night: "The Lorax" and "I Wish I Had Duck Feet". Lily sat calmly in her bed listening to each book, while her brother trashed her room. He crawled onto her bed, climbed over her, and tossed down each stuffed animal down to the ground. Then he went over to her toy kitchen and started moving it around the room, stopping only to pretend to wash his hands and blow his nose.
He didn't even get to hear most of the Lorax, since he started to get fussy and was rushed off to his room. This was fine, because I was able to talk to Lily about the story more in depth, and I think she got a lot more out of what is probably my favorite Dr Seuss book.
In the end, it worked out very well. Sure, Nate didn't sit for the book, but this is a first step. It completely eliminated his sister's tantrums that we'd been seeing regularly at that time of night.
I'm not sure exactly how bedtime will work in the future, but I know based on these first few years with kids that it will continuously change.
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