Hellobee

I love day in the life posts! It’s fun to see little snippets of people’s realities. In this case, I took these photos and notes on a weekday, which meant M was away at preschool. I think it’d be interesting to compare that to a weekend when Mac Daddy and M are home, or in another month when both kids are at home with me and Mac Daddy is at work.

This was a Wednesday in March. A was one day away from four months old; M was two years, four months old.

8 a.m.

I slowly pry my eyes open. This is abnormally late for waking up — usually A wakes up when M and Mac Daddy get up around 7 a.m. to get ready for school, and I nurse him and bring him out around 7:30, help get M dressed while Mac Daddy showers, and get myself and A ready after they leave. But the kids had a later night — Mac Daddy took them out for a long walk after supper — so A slept in and so did I. I sneak out and start a coffee. I fill in M’s book order that’s due today. Having already eaten breakfast, and already dressed courtesy of Mac Daddy, M is having her allotted morning screen time — say what you will about kids and screens, but it helps get everyone out the door.

8:30 a.m.

A is awake. Mac Daddy picks up A and changes his diaper, and I nurse him in his room then put him down on the floor for some play time.

9 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

Mac Daddy and M say goodbye and leave after taking our garbage cans to the road. They’re late, but that’s typical for Wednesday, which is always garbage day. I’m back in the nursery with A, trying to scarf a bowl of yogurt while he starts fussing. I move him to his crib for a change of environment while I get dressed. Normally we’d have somewhere to go this afternoon — there’s a playgroup that means the first and third Wednesday of the month, and mom’s group that meets the second and fourth Wednesday, but this is a rare fifth Wednesday and there’s nothing going on. Still, I need to get up to M’s old daycare to see the admin and pay our preschool bill (I can only pay at her current preschool in cash, and I prefer to do things through the admin to keep our receipts in one place!).

10 a.m.

I’m dressed. I was hoping A would fall asleep as he sometimes does in the morning, post-nursing and playtime, but he hasn’t, and we need to go. The daycare is just up the road from our house and I determine it’s not worth the effort of loading him into the car seat, or taking the stroller out of the garage — I can wrap him up and walk there faster. So we do! It’s a fairly nice day and I’m so glad that the winter weather is melting away. I chat with the admin about her newest grandbabies, we talk about how expensive the month was with so many weekdays in March, discuss when we will be withdrawing M from preschool for summer, and I pay the bill. Ten minutes later we’re back home, and A is still wide awake.

10:15 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

I sit down on the couch and turn on Netflix while I nurse A again. I try to put him down in his glider half an hour later because he’s dozing, but he’s awake in fifteen minutes. I pick him up and nurse him again while watching Netflix and texting with Mac Daddy about whether or not I should meet him for lunch, and if he thinks the Thule will fit in the back of my car. At 11:30, A is finally asleep enough that I can put him down in the glider without an immediate wake-up.

11:30 a.m. – Noon

I head into the kitchen and unload the dishwasher. I always unload it during the day, and Mac Daddy loads it and runs it at night. It’s a system that works for us, though it does mean that the counter above the dishwasher gets cluttered during the day. Having unloaded everything, and determined that I’m staying at home to eat because A is finally napping, I decide to make a souffle omelette (my recent obsession) and hope that the electric mixer won’t wake up baby. I’m trying to focus more on making and eating good food, even if it takes more time, because it’s an act of self-care more than eating something unhealthy with one hand is, for me.

Literally the moment I sit down at the table with my meal, A wakes up! I change him and lay him down with his play gym to try to eat my omelette in his room fast enough for his liking, but he’s not having it. I eat quickly while it’s still hot and pick him up to nurse again.

12:15 p.m. – 1 p.m.

Nursing, rocking him, and finally, laying him down in his crib, asleep. I quickly run downstairs to check on the basement — our laundry area floods every spring, and there’s a pile of soaked towels that smell musty, so I toss them into the washing machine, check the messages on the landline phone we never use, and head back upstairs to hear A crying.

1:15 p.m. – 3 p.m.

So begins another ‘how to make this kid sleep’ dance. I take him into our bedroom and nurse him, knowing I can easily lay him down on the bed if and when he falls asleep. We are not a family that worries about sleep habits and routines and all of that; these days I just aim for sleep in some capacity. He’s asleep by 2 p.m. so I lay him down and decide to open up a book on my e-reader. I was going to try to get out for a stroller walk today, but clearly this kid needs sleep. At 2:45 his eyes pop open again so I nurse him and put him back down onto the bed, sleeping, 15 minutes later.

3:20 p.m.

A appears to be sleeping fairly deeply so I turn off the e-reader and head into the kitchen. I remembered that I needed stock for dinner tonight, and back when I went grocery shopping I told myself I’d just make it out of the bones we had in the freezer instead of buying it — and then I didn’t do it. Thank goodness for the Instant Pot! I find two bags of bones in the freezer, which I add to water and a few chopped veggies, then set the pot to pressure cook for an hour. It should be done by the time I’m making dinner.

I go downstairs with A’s dirty cloth diapers and switch the laundry loads. I hate doing laundry midday on weekdays — our electricity prices vary depending on time of day and weekday vs. weekend and I’d rather do it off-peak on weekends, but we need clean diapers, and those towels were just gross. When I come back up I do a speed-tidy of the living room, tossing M’s toys and books into their respective baskets until I can sort them out later.

3:30 p.m.

I quickly tidy A’s room. I still need to vacuum one of these days, but at least the floor is clear. I did the same with M’s room the day prior. It’s not necessarily organized, but it’s less cluttered. I check in on A, and he’s still sleeping, so I open up the fundraising package M’s preschool sent home the day before and take a look at what flower bulbs are on offer. That reminds me that I need to order our regular garden seeds, so I pop onto the laptop quickly to start making an order.

4 p.m.

A is still asleep. I sit down in the nursery with my e-reader so I’ll be close enough to pop in and out of the bedroom to check on him.

4:45 p.m.

He’s awake and happy! It’s amazing what a nap can do. We lay in bed and chat until Mac Daddy and M come home. They’re usually home by five, but they’re checking the mail and gassing up the truck today.

5:30 p.m.

The rest of the family is here. M comes bounding into the bedroom excitedly announcing that I got chocolate in the mail (which I knew, and was why I told Mac Daddy to check the mail!). A is always delighted to see his sister. Mac Daddy changes out of his work clothes, grabs A, and heads to the living room with M so I can make dinner.

5:45 p.m.

I check out my chocolate order (craft/artisan chocolate is my vice). Then I open the Instant Pot and suddenly remember that one of those bags of frozen soup bones was actually a bunch of ham, and a ham bone, from when my mom was here and cooking just after we brought A home. And I’ve apparently mixed that with some chicken bones. Whoops. The stock still tastes good though, after I strain it, so I laugh it off and chalk it up to having a fuzzy brain these days.

6:50 p.m. – 7:10 p.m.

Dinner is served! While I cook Mac Daddy and I talk politics, the kids are entertained by various things, and I manage to burn my arm on a hot pan. We’re having prosciutto-wrapped pesto-stuffed chicken and roasted green beans.

I rely on the Cooksmarts service for a lot of our meal planning, and they knocked this one out of the park. M eats all of her chicken and some of the beans. A is also quite enthralled and is drooling all over Mac Daddy while we eat. This kid can’t wait for solids, it seems.

7:15 p.m.

Mac Daddy starts clearing up dinner and the day’s dishes, while I sit down and feed A. M is not allowed on her tablet after dinner, so she digs into her play kitchen and brings A and I ‘meals’ that she’s created. I turn on the Hue lights in the living room and play music for her so she can put on a show for us.

7:30 p.m.

The kitchen is clean. I want to spend some one-on-one time with M, so I ask her if she wants to read her Chirp magazine with me. We head to the master bedroom to read, while A and Mac Daddy stay in the living room. This month’s edition is about trees, which is super exciting for M because she’s been very interested in feeding the birds and squirrels in our backyard.

7:50 p.m.

We’re done the magazine, but M wants to take it out to the dining room table to use her crayons on one of the colouring activities within it. That’s fine by me, and she asks me to help, so we sit and colour a bit. Then she requests her “Paw Patrol book for colouring” so I find it in her room, bring it out, and colour with her a bit more. In the meantime A is starting to grump, so Mac Daddy takes him to change him and get him into pajamas.

8:15 p.m.

We set the colouring stuff aside and head into the master bedroom for a tiny bit of family hangout time before A starts to really grump. It’s fairly short-lived, because A is hungry and tired, so I boot M and Mac Daddy out and nurse the baby. It’s always hard to get him down when M is still awake and wired, because the house just isn’t quiet enough. Mac Daddy and I squabble over whether me shushing him is louder than him making noise getting into pajamas.

8:45 p.m.

A was definitely tired — it’s easy to get him down, and he’s passed out in the cradle, swaddled. Mac Daddy is getting M ready for bed, and they’re doing their usual evening chores of feeding the cats and locking the doors. M decides she’s going to scrub the sink while she’s in the kitchen, which is hilariously weird, but I won’t complain!

9 p.m.

I sneak one of my chocolate bars into the bedroom and eat it while nobody is around to make me share. I take pictures and notes, because I usually blog about my chocolate finds on my personal blog. A lot of the time I’ll try just a bit and leave the rest for Mac Daddy and M to share another day, but not this time.

9:15 p.m.

Mac Daddy and M are in bed in her room. He’s been sleeping in her bed while we’ve been trying to adjust to A’s terrible sleep, M’s request for a grownup because she’s scared, and the need to maximize on the most amount of sleep we can all get. I’m hoping that when A is ready to move into the crib in the nursery we can all go back to our respective beds. I kill the lights in the bedroom with my phone (thanks, smart devices!) and after some Facebook browsing and tossing and turning, I’m asleep within an hour or so.

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This is a fairly standard day, although like I said, there’d usually be a mommy and me type of activity, and usually, Wednesday is a skating day which means we lose an hour after school, I pick up M, and dinner is much simpler. We’re coming to the tail end of skating, but that’ll be replaced by baseball so summer will still have that element of chaos! Some days we go out grocery shopping or walk to the mail, or just go for a walk. With M at home for summer, I know we’re going to be much busier.

And, as much as I’d love to hang out with Mac Daddy more once the kids are asleep, I’m just too tired lately. I’m a firm believer in seasons of life, though, and I know that our season will evolve into a new one soon enough — within the next month, actually, as M leaves preschool!