When the Kid was little, we both read her bedtime stories and shared the tuck-in routine. It was nice. When I started pharmacy school and she discovered being an insomniac no matter how early we put her to bed or how totally we attempted to exhaust her, I ceded all bedtime routine to my spouse. I always expected it to be temporary during school but then just-about-bedtime became my regular study group time so I would get cut short reading a story, crying would ensue, so I stopped helping with bedtime entirely. When Little Monster was tiny and during the summer she was zero, I would read her story and my spouse would read the Kid's story. Even as she started toddling I still helped with Little Monster's story, reading it ten times over while the Kid had her story read to her. Then rotations happened, I was gone for the year, and then I was hunting for a job or waiting in near-snarl suspenseful anxiety. I opted out of bedtime because I get super short-tempered when I'm tired and I am fed up (see: bedtime with a stressed anxious kid and a 2 year old for the definition of "things which push a parent to get fed up"). Now that I have the long-awaited job and things are almost settled, I had thought I would be getting back into bedtime.
Instead I am realizing that I am snarly and short-tempered when my feet hurt, as they do every day lately, and I make bedtime so much slower and incite triple the Kid rioting that my spouse does. I kind of hate that in the morning I'm the taskmaster who is hurrying the kid along and at night I am hurrying her along to bed so I can get some rest and we never have the chance to go her speed (because she ignores my prompts that would keep her on schedule and then demands a full hour wind-down starting 30 minutes after her bedtime. For now we just need to get through with as little tension as possible so I will continue to opt out of bedtime. Hopefully the solutions will present themselves soon.
It sounds like even with the unexpected way things have worked out, you are rolling with the punches and doing what is best for everyone at this time. That doesn't mean forever though. Maybe when the kids are a bit older and less testy, you will return to bedtime... maybe you won't. I am sure you will figure it out and create a new family routine that works for all of you. Tonight neither my husband or I felt up to child #2 bedtime after I had put child #1 down, so we let her hang out with us past her bedtime on the couch, watching The Voice with us and she ended up passing out there and we carried her off to bed just now. No, not great parenting and not a nightly solution but it worked. Kids are tough and rolling with the punches is key!
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