Hellobee

unfortunately we fall into the category of those with long commutes (1 hour). i go to bed at 9pm, wake up at 5am, wake up LO at 5.30, leave for work at 6, and DH takes LO to daycare around 6.30. i leave work at 3.30 to pick up LO, get home by 5 (yes, 1.5 hours later), and put LO to bed by 6pm.

we only have one LO right now so we manage okay (we don’t get much time with him during the week but it makes the weekends sweeter), but i imagine things would be so much tougher with a second LO. we may have to move!

Phew. Do you get to catch up on sleep on the weekends??

We get up at 5:30am. I’ve usually been up twice between 11pm and 5:30am. I’ll get up and shower and get ready by 6am. At 6, I wake the baby and nurse her and get her ready for the day. We go downstairs by 6:15 and get her daycare things ready to go (breakfast, lunch, snack and three bottles). I usually don’t have time to make breakfast for me or my husband so we grab something to go like a bagel or yogurt. I leave the house at 6:38, get to daycare at 7, then drive to work which takes another 1/2 hour. We both get home at 5, dinner at 5:30 and M goes to sleep around 6:30. Then we spend 40 minutes cleaning up from dinner and cleaning pump parts and bottles. I can’t WAIT to stop pumping and doing bottles!!

ohmylanta! We did a month where M wanted to start the day at 5am. It was brutal. Hopefully Jaren starts sleeping in a little soon for you!

You are supermomma!!!

Reading this totally reminds me of the crazy days when LMW was a newborn. It lasted until about 5 months… she would need to be rocked to sleep every 30 mins on the DOT after bedtime until about 10pm when she’d finally be down for the night. I know it was because of teething, the poor baby, because feeding or not feeding her didn’t seem to make a difference .We tried EVERYTHING. It got to the point where Wagon Sr. would do the night feeding (anytime between midnight at 4am depending on what time she went down for good for the night) while I pumped then went right back to sleep. Lucky for us, LMW would go back to sleep right after her night feeding. Every night I’d think “I just can’t do this anymore!!!”. We had my mom’s help but since she was home alone with LMW all day we tried not to rely on her while we were at home. It was torture… but when she finally settled in with her sleep and started STTN, boy oh boy did life change!!! Now that both our kids are pretty much sleeping from 7-7 (well, in LMW’s case it’s more like 6:30 – 6 right now) we’ve reached that light at the end of the tunnel. Jaren will get there in no time and you will look back on this time very proudly…!!! You are doing a FANTASTIC job!!!

Wow! I can’t imagine adding cooking in. I’ve always eaten in the car or at work and dh doesn’t eat breakfast. I get up at 5:30 and have to be out the door by 6:45 at the latest. My school starts at 7:30 and I have a 25 min commute.

Luckily lo eats while I pump and goes right back to sleep (next to me in the boppy).

That is insane! Was it this insane with just 1 child?

We get up at 7, get everyone out of the door at 8.

Baby is in bed at 8p. We make it to bed about 10/11.

oh gracious! I am thinking my days will look fairly similar in the fall when I head back to work and let me tell you, I am not looking forward to it!

You, my dear, are a super Mom, how do you keep this pace!!

I have a 12 month old and a 23 month old and my morning starts are somewhat variable. The schedule is if things go perfectly but in general we are (knock on wood) either on time or no more than 10 minutes late.

The 12 month old can get up once anywhere from 4 – 5:30. If he gets up at 4 he will have a diaper change, bottle and then back to sleep until about 6:30 or so. If he is up at 5:30 then he is just up for the morning. My DH and I alternate who gets up.

5:45 the alarm goes off and one of us hits the shower; the other one is either unstacking the dishwasher and getting breakfast ready. Then we swap whomever showered and dressed first takes over and the other one showers.
6:20 ish one of us will get the older one up, diaper change and dressed for the day.
6:30 family breakfast for myself, DH and the older one. The little one plays in his highchair.
6:50 I get my lunch bag, purse, and anything else needed for work kiss the kids and DH and I am out the door.

The rest of the morning is a mystery as DH finishes up with the kids, gets the little one dressed, does scar massage for the littlest one, packs them in the car and gets them to daycare, thank goodness the few times I have to do drop off it is torture for me. I get to work at 7:30

I leave work at about 4 and pick up the kids at daycare around 4:30 and depending on how long I spend talking to their respective daycare workers (they are in two different rooms) and how long it takes to get the older one up the stairs we roll into the kitchen at 4:40-4:50

4:50-6 MAYHEM….I quickly get dinner going, and feed the little one while the older one plays until dinner at 5:30. This is absolutely mayhem most days. DH gets home between 5:30 and 5:45 so he joins us for dinner,

6 – we play with the older one, start getting the younger ready for bed including another round of scar massage.

6:30 the younger is in bed and we start getting the older one ready for bed and a tiny bit more play time

7- the older one is in bed and one parent puts him to bed, the other parent does the dinner dishes and puts leftovers away. Then the other parent joins and packs lunches for everyone for the next day and puts them in the fridge. I generally start dinner for the next day by chopping up what needs chopping and sometimes cooking things (like browning ground beef) or putting together a casserole so all I have to do is shove it in the oven when I get home.

8 PM collapse on couch and watch some tv/ surf web / crochet /talk to DH etc.

9- 10:30 Bedtime is also variable depending on how tired we are etc but anywhere between 9 -10:30. We both need a lot of sleep but DH needs more than I.

Checklists are our saviors. We have one for morning and evening chores. It allows us to more easily transition handing off tasks to the other person.

@edelweiss: Is your daycare closer to home or work? How does your LO do in the carseat? When Noelle was a baby she would scream and fuss in the carseat and I hated driving anywhere further than 30 minutes. Jaren is an angel in the carseat though and never cries so I think with him driving long distances might not be so bad. But it must be so hard to have to wake your baby so early in the morning!

@mediagirl: On weekends, I’ll go back to sleep after the 4:30 am feeding instead of staying up for the day, and my day will officially start around 7. I think once Jaren drops that 10-11:30 pm night feeding i’ll be able to go to sleep around 10 pm and get in at least 6-7 hours. Cannot wait for that day to come.

@regberadaisy: “Ohmylanta” – hahaha, I’m going to have to steal that! The 5 am wakings with Noelle was US last month!! Thankfully, it passed… but it was a rough month so I can relate. Combine that with a newborn nursing every 2 hours and I thought for sure it was going to be the end of me.

@Mrs Green Grass: I’m usually better about making bulk breakfasts on Sunday night (baked oatmeal or quiches) so that I can just microwave our breakfasts during the week, but lately I’ve been making it daily since I’m up anyway! I need to go back to that again. I think if we had longer commutes and needed to be out of the house earlier, we would be skipping breakfast too.

@mrs. wagon: Our situation sounds so similar! And like you, because my MIL is watching Jaren during the day, we really try not to impose on her too much other than that if we don’t have to. It is such a blessing to have her though! I know once we’re past this newborn stage, things will get a lot better… if he can just drop his 10-11:30 pm feeding, that will make a world of a difference. I really don’t mind waking up early since I’m a morning person anyway, but I would love to sleep earlier! Right now I keep thinking, what’s the point of sleeping at 9 pm if he’s just going to wake up in an hour or two. I’d rather stay up a little while longer than knock out and have to drag myself out of bed again.

Crazy!! I have to relate to the 5am wakings which thankfully went away last week. I thought it only happened at the 12 month mark…you mean it happens again when she’s a toddler??

LO wakes up anywhere from 6-6:30, but i get her at 6:30am, nurse her, change her diaper and clothes, and then read her 2 books before bringing her downstairs. I’ll get her breakfast ready and bring her to DH while i wash up and get my “face” ready. We’ll have breakfast and while she plays i’ll finish getting dressed, pack her knapsack, my laptop and lunch bag in the umbrella stroller. At 8am we leave the house and walk to the train station that’s about 5 minutes away and get to daycare by 8:30am. I get to my office at 8:40am and start my day! We are in transition week, but the plan is for me to pick her up at 4:30pm.

We get home and play while i heat up/make her dinner and we eat at 5:30pm. Bath at 6, and in bed by 7pm. Once she’s in bed, DH and i will have a real dinner. Then i clean up, do dishes, make her breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next day, as well as pack lunches for DH and me. I find that making her breakfast/dinner for the next day make life so much easier. It’s hard to make dinner while a whining baby is hugging your leg! I’ll sometimes spend an hour catching up on work, then shower and pass out around 11:30pm.

I don’t know how i’m going to handle it when #2 comes around!!

@Mrs Green Grass: If DH doesn’t eat breakfast at home, he’ll end up eating fast food like Jack in the Box or Del Taco… to me, that’s terrible for his health and money down the drain, so I always make sure he gets his breakfast.

@babynumber1: It’s insane right now because my son is still so young, and my daughter is a toddler. It was easier with just one bc her whole first year was mainly breastmilk. Plus, my MIL was watching her at home so we didn’t worry about having to pack her lunch, drop her off at daycare, etc. I think things will get easier around here once Jaren starts STTN, and when I decide to skip the MOTN pump session.

@Mrs. Tea: I think all mom’s are supermoms! You’ll find your rhythm too once you go back to work, and soon into feel like second nature.

@Mrs. High Heels: When people tell me they go to bed by 9:30pm, i usually want to scream, “what’s your secret??”

@Mrs.Maven: I love that you wrote out your whole day. A lot of it sounds similar to ours. DH always does the drop offs and I do the pick ups, and I always prep/cook dinner for the next day the night before as well. I don’t want to end my work day worrying about putting dinner on the table. I am working on getting my DH to wake up earlier so he can help me more in the mornings.

@Freckles: I remember having 5 am wakings at 12-months – I thought it was over too, but our kiddos always find some way to surprise us, don’t they? Since Noelle is no longer in a crib, she has learned how to get in and out of bed on her own, and how to open her own door. Usually she’ll naturally wake up at 6:45 am, and run down the hall to our room – there’s no confining a toddler! But for whatever reason, last month she woke up at 5 am EVERY DAY. I googled “toddler waking up at 5 am” or something like that and apparently this is common… I’m just glad it passed.

WOW! I feel overwhelmed just reading about your morning!!!!

@Mrs. High Heels: haha have you watched The Ringer with Johnny Knoxville?

this sounds so overwhelming.

Your morning sounds a lot like mine with 2 kids, but I stopped working so at least I can just throw on some yoga pants in terms of getting myself dressed. That is so helpful that your MIL is around! I drop my oldest off at preschool and then stay home with the baby. If I still worked, there would also be a daycare drop off/pick up in there. I think that would make me nuts so I’m not working for now!

I’m worried about how our schedule will be once LO is here. Hubby leaves the house at 2am and returns around 3pm. I leave the house at 7am and return around 5:30pm!

Thanks for providing some insight though!!

That sounds like a “mad sprint!” Whoa. We have very early days here… but at least I don’t need to get all that you do done here. It would never happen. I’m tipping my hat to you! Way to go!

Wow…I am impressed that you manage to do so much! Great job, mama!

Seriously, so impressed. I think even if/when we have 2, I will not be as efficient as you!