Thus far

The experiment began last week...it began on a beautiful sunny day and it was simple and pleasant and ended with a 20 minute bedtime and one happy mama!

The following day was gloomy and dull and we needed to figure out some groundwork for this all...lights were necessary for productivity in our home and hence, we decided we would turn out the lights after dinner...
An early dinner meant that before bedtime we still had a couple hours of no artificial light and bedtime was 15 minutes!!

Alas...as I have learned in my creation of rhythms for our family, there is always a challenge to every well laid plan. Each Monday the kids and I get home quite late...tonight it was exceptionally late as I was held up helping my parents out in town. When we got home, artificial light was the last thing on my mind as I had to deal with a child who had potentially been given an allergenic food, getting dinner into the kids and my hungry self, and getting sleepy people to bed, not to mention that my partner had plans to go out after we ate.
And sure enough, with no intent of anything except the norm, my partner had all of the lights on in the house when I got home. After I spent some time turning lights out and lighting candles to the dismay of my grumbling family...we probably had a total of 30 minutes of artificial light free time. And it was awfully dark in our house due to the rainy weather and the time of night. More grumbling pursued. Bedtime came along...rhythms were already broken...important pieces were missed and C and I ended up with an hour long bedtime.
BUT it didn't leave me feeling as let down as you might expect...if you'll look back on the introduction, 1 hour is lovely! We have had 2 hour + bedtimes as a norm for as long as I can remember. So tonight here's what we did and how it ended...

We gobbled down our supplements and skipped brushing our teeth because he was simply melting down and I was worried about missing the boat. We snuggled and hugged L goodnight while she decided to read to herself in her room by the light of her headlamp (I let it go). C and I climbed into our rocking chair with jammies on to read our nighttime stories and then settled in for some mama milk. Now let me tell you about this nursing toddler of mine...I can tell when he's going to nurse for a bit and then simply drift off to sleep (as he fascinatingly does each day at naptime in about 10-20min)...and tonight was quite the opposite. There is hair pulling. There is kicking. There is setting him down because I'm tired of the hair pulling and kicking. There is singing. There is dancing. There is actually some breastfeeding as well somewhere in there. But mostly it's kicking, hair pulling, singing and dancing in my lap. Oh and a few other super annoying toddler nursing antics (if you're a nursing mother I'm SURE you can relate). About 30 minutes into this crazy so called routine of ours I changed it up. We got into bed and laid down together to snuggle. We talked about sleep and said goodnight to our friends, nature and the animals in the forest. Then came the requests for more stories and more mama milk and more water and more snacks...I took a break to get him some flower essences that have proven helpful in the past. I came back and we laid back down while I sang him a song.
This next part has NEVER, not once, not EVER happened. He simply drifted off to sleep while I sang to him. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?!  I snuck out of the room with giddy excitement and he's been asleep ever since, not even woken up by the customary loud partner crawling into bed!!!

Ok so...nothing I did tonight was any different than any other night in the past while. EXCEPT...we did try to limit our artificial light tonight. It wasn't an excellent attempt but it was an attempt.
I'm making zero claims to success here...I'm just stating the facts of our evening. And thus far, I'm thrilled!