For years, I would read books out loud to my kids every night.  As they got older, we read chapter books and increasingly more sophisticated material.  It got challenging to balance this with the younger kids, so eventually what I did was to have two reading sessions – the first one geared toward the younger crowd, then they’d be put to bed, then the longer session for the older kids.  This was something that I loved, but this started to falter about five years ago.

In recent times, dh has been the bedtime reader for the littles, though he often tells stories of his own creations, which they love even more.  This is something that works great for us all – he’s busy at work all day and enjoys connecting with the kids before bed, and after a long day with the kids, I’m ready for some quiet time.

But now dh is in the US so this schedule obviously needs to be altered!  When he first left I was still pretty sick and not up for reading.  What I did instead was invite everyone to get comfortable in my room, and then we listened to a recorded book together (a digital version checked out online via my US library system). This was great because we were able to have the shared experience of a book, and my physical limitations weren’t a concern.

This worked out so well that I decided to continue even after I was feeling better.  Our new routine is dinner, get into pajamas, brush teeth, everyone does their evening chore, and then join me in my room for a story.  If they get there soon enough, then we have story hour; this is the ideal.  If we’re running late, then we cut down accordingly.

A nice side benefit of this is that the littles (hmm, since ds7 had a birthday recently I’ve been wondering if I can continue calling them this…) fall asleep while listening.

The only problem with that is that they are all left sleeping in my room!  But I found a solution for that, too.  I told ds14 that his evening chore can be to carry them up to their beds.  It beats doing the dishes. 🙂

Avivah