Bed time

I think Acorn needs a bedtime routine.

He's at that age where he doesn't just fall asleep anywhere. And now that he's been out of the hospital long enough that we've abandoned their routines, he needs a bit more stability in his life (which is probably why weekends are so hard, because we're still learning to balance his schedule with ours, and generally doing a bad job - during the week, his nurses keep his schedule going quite swimmingly).

We've never done the nightly bath thing. It's hard on my skin, and his is even more sensitive, so it's not worth upsetting the apple cart, you know? But I'm thinking 9 pm, jammies (now that it'll soon be PJ weather here in the great white north again), g-tube and trach cleaning and new ties (we've found his nurses to be inconsistent on this front), a book or two, and then to bed. He puts himself to sleep really well, which is good news for us.

I think I'd like to add a prayer in there. Something appropriately Pagan - and I'm actually pretty flexible on that, having done everything from ceremonial magick to Wicca to hard-core polytheist to Dianic. Right now, I just want something that works for us, and something that is easy for little ones to say and remember - it's not like Acorn will be talking anytime soon, but it needs to be something that will be easy for him when he does.

Google gives lots of options, and like most things meant for kids these days (and like a surprising number of Pagan-y things these days), they mostly seem kinda hokey. So far, the best I've found (which comes with an "author unknown" attribution, so if it's yours, please let me know so I can give appropriate credit):

Day is done, it's time for bed
Goddess bless my sleepy head
Earth and Water, Air and Fire
Bring gentle dreams as I retire
When the morning sun does rise
The God will bless my open eyes

Anyways. I think we'll start with that, and see if we can make progress. The one stumbling block I see is that some nights our nurses come at 9, and most of them are obviously Christian - several wear crosses, one sends her kids to Catholic school - so I doubt they'd do prayers with him. But it'd be a start.