Show and Tell Tuesday: A Day in the Life

 

I haven’t linked up with Show and Tell Tuesday in a while, but A Day in the Life is one of my absolute favorite topics! I love looking back on my “Day in the Life” posts and smile at the little details that made up my day.

For those of you who are new here, I will clarify some details of life, so it all makes more sense.

  • I am married to Theo, who is a first responder at our local fire station. He works 24 hour shifts, then has 48 hours off. There are many benefits to this schedule, but its sometimes also hard. This particular day in the life takes place when Theo is at work.
  • I have a 20 month old daughter, Tera, and a 7 month old foster daughter, whom we call “Little Miss” online. I’m also 13 weeks pregnant!
  • I’m a stay at home Mom! As of right now, since my children are still little ones, we don’t have many places to go during the day. I know this gives our day a very laid-back approach, but it also drives this extrovert Mama just a *little* bit crazy!
  • Every.single.day is different around here. Whether Theo is home or at work, or if the girls actually take good naps, or if we make some plans to get out. It’s really flexible!

So, here we go!

Tuesday, April 19th, 2016

2:30 am. Technically, this is the start of the day. Little Miss is up (for the second time), and I feed her and change her, then lay her back down. Of course I have to use the bathroom since there is another little human pushing on my bladder. I go back to sleep without any problem!

5:30 am. Theo’s alarm goes off, and he rolls out of bed and hits the shower. I decide I might as well get Little Miss up and feed her so she will hopefully go back to sleep before it’s too light out. If I just leave her, she will wake up by 6:30 and not go back to sleep. I kiss Theo goodbye and head back to bed again.

7:30 am. Little Miss is up for the day. I change her and head downstairs to work on my breakfast. I usually love to shower and wake up before the kids, but this pregnancy has been really rough on me. When I hit 11 weeks, I was finally able to be interested in breakfast and now it’s the first thing I need in the morning. I mean…the FIRST thing.

I eat my breakfast, sip my chai and do my devotions while Little Miss plays on the floor. She is just starting to crawl, and its super fun to watch, but I’m reminded again of the mobile, put-everything-in-their-mouth stage.

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8:30 am. Do you know how lucky I am? My toddler is still upstairs sleeping. I usually have to wake her up around 8:30. But even if she is awake, she is content to just play in her crib. It makes my mornings so much easier!!

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The first thing she says when she wakes up is “Morning Little Miss (with her real name)” “Morning Dada” “Morning Moose” (the cat). Since I always wake her, I don’t get the same treatment. Ha! She gets a diaper change and we pick out clothes for the day.

I make Tera her breakfast and then feed Tera and Little Miss at the table. Breakfast takes forever! Little Miss and Tera are best friends/frenemies and distract each other all day long. They are constant companions.

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9:30 Breakfast is done, and I work on cleaning it up while the girls start destroying the house piece by piece. I don’t even know why I bother to clean. But, alas…that is what I do!

While I clean and do chores, I usually listen to some worship music or a podcast. I recently discovered The Happy Hour and I’ve been listening to it like crazy!

I write my to-do list for the day, then I do my daily chore.

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It’s Tuesday so today is cleaning the bathroom! I clean the upstairs bathroom and the downstairs bathroom, since we had guests stay over this past weekend. I also strip the guest beds and make a laundry pile from the guest room. I feel like I have washed the guest bed sheets SO many times in the past two weeks. We were sick, then we had guests come for one night, then we had other guests stay for one night, and now we have another guest staying tonight. That’s four times in the last three weeks!

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Of course, I have to stop at least 10 times in the middle of my chores to rescue Tera, to stop Tera from hitting Little Miss on the head, to take Little Miss out of the trash can, to get Tera some water and to correct behavior- repeat, repeat, repeat.

Little Miss lasted about 15 minutes before she was crying and crying and crying, and I had to strap her on my back to get anything done. I usually end up wearing her a good portion of the day, as she is not content to just sit and play.

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11:00 I’ve finally finished cleaning both bathrooms, and as I peek into my bedroom I realize it is a complete disaster zone. I love to be neat, so I decide to spend some time working on cleaning it. I also know that for the past few weeks, I have been just throwing a lot of stuff into the closets instead of hanging them up or putting them away, so I tackle the closets. It feels REALLY good to be done with that!

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11:40 It’s 11:40 and Little Miss is getting really fussy. I know she’s hungry and it’s time to lay her down for her nap. Yes, I know what you are thinking…how old is she? She is 7.5 months old and she only takes ONE nap a day. I know, it’s insane…and I’ve tried everything to get her to sleep more…but to no avail. She has been up since 7:30 and is only now tired enough to take a nap.

I thought it was really quiet while I was getting Little Miss’ bottle ready… I wonder who the culprit here…

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I wash her bottles, then heat up some lunch for Tera so that she will be occupied while I feed Little Miss her bottle. Near the end of the bottle, I hear Tera yelling, “ALL DONE! ALL DONE!”, so I lay Little Miss down and go clean Tera up, change her diaper and lay her down, too.

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I text Theo and find out that he is having an even crazier day than I am…

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Hallejuah! It’s now noon and I have both girls sleeping! Wooohooo! I sit down on my bed and browse Instagram for about ten minutes, then jump in the shower. I showered! And I’m 13 weeks 3 days, so I’m officially done with the first trimester! Yes!!!

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The minute I get out of the shower, I hear Little Miss screaming. Yes, she’s awake! It’s 12:35, so she slept for 35 minutes. I try really hard to not burst into tears, as I was really hoping for a little bit of a longer nap today. I know it’s selfish, but sometimes I just need that me time. I immediately regret taking a shower, since that was the only me time I had for the day. And I haven’t even had lunch yet.

1:00 pm. After trying to get Little Miss to go back to sleep, I give up and heat up some leftovers for my lunch. I know it’s not necessarily a popular parenting strategy, but I leave her safely in the pack n play while I get my lunch. I just cannot deal with her at the moment, and she’s not crying, so I figure she will be fine for 10 minutes or so. She does start crying, but I take some time for myself and watch a short episode of a cooking show.

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1:30 pm. I get Little Miss up and bring her out to play on the floor. Unfortunately, the floor is a no-go for her, so I have to hold her. I had wanted to work on my blog a bit at this point, but it looks like that will not happen. After 15 minutes or so of holding her, I try the floor again…this time she is happy to play on the floor! Yay!! Blogging it is. My goal is to crank out two blog posts.

2:30 pm. I have cranked out two blog posts and Little Miss is no longer happy to be on the floor. I try to lay her down again and she protests with extremely loud screams that wake Tera up. At this point, I’m beyond frustrated. Let’s be real here, guys.DSC06489 I’m frustrated.

 

I have a huge mound of dishes that I need to do, I have the messiest house, I have two kids that both woke up from their naps early and I’m just feeling all types of frustrated. I want to include these emotions in this post because it’s real life, and I want to be able to look back and be realistic about the stage I’m in. I’m not proud of the fact that I got frustrated today, but it is a fact.

3:00 pm. After throwing my own temper tantrum that matched the ones Little Miss and Tera were throwing, I decided I just had to get.out.of.the.house. I was hoping driving around would convince Little Miss to fall asleep again. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work.

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We drove to the library, stopped at the park and then stopped at the store for some formula and baby food (which we were running dangerously low on!). The girls did fairly well when we were out, although we had a few minor meltdowns.

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5:00 pm. When I got back, I let them play outside while I unloaded the groceries. At this point, I have literally been going all day long without any type of break, except for the 20 minutes I took to eat my lunch and the shower that I did manage to get! I’m feeling it and I need to sit down and do nothing for a few minutes, so I take the girls inside and let them lose in the house while I sit in the rocking chair and browse Facebook for a few minutes.

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I know it’s getting close to six and I need to wash those dishes as well as make dinner, so I finally get myself up. I switch over the laundry, do the dishes and then get started on dinner.

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7:00 pm. It’s dinner time! Finally! Of course, I hardly sat down because someone kept needing something else. I also like to watch a cooking show when I’m eating dinner with little humans who can’t speak.

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7:30 pm. Aunt Natalie usually comes over on nights that Theo is working, but we have both had some crazy conflicting schedules lately and she hasn’t been able to come by. She was able to come by this night AND she offered to stay the night and take care of Little Miss so I can actually sleep my pregnant body through the night. HALLELUJAH!!!!

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8:00 pm. I put Tera to bed, hand Little Miss off to Aunt Natalie and then head upstairs to hit the sack myself. I watch an episode of something on Netflix while finishing up this blog post. I snack on my carrots and finish up my night by reading a few chapters in my book. I’m asleep by 10!

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