The easiest way to make me feel frazzled and overwhelmed doing this mom thing is for us to go way off of our routine for a while. I feel lost, un-anchored, just sort of drifting along and fuzzy. I know this isn't true for everybody, some people thrive on a more spur of the moment, every day is a different adventure, kind of life. And that's great! But that's definitely not me. Right now we're coming off of several weeks of disrupted routine. Between trips and illnesses and some snow, our usual routine was nowhere to be found. Being in our normal routine this week has felt like slipping into a hot bubble bath after a really, really long day. So cozy and so comfortable. I feel like the whole week has just been one gigantic sigh of relief. I feel calmer, happier, and even the kids' behavior is markedly better. With this fresh gratitude and appreciation for our routine, now seems like the perfect time to write this post. The rhythm of our days brings me such joy and that's what is important, right? Whether you thrive on a structured day or not, the end goal for all of us should be days that bring us joy. Here's what joy looks like for me.
6:30- On a great day, when all the stars have aligned, Anna has slept through the night or only woke briefly once, nobody else has needed me in the night, and anxiety over one thing or another hasn't kept me awake at any point, I will wake up at 6:30 and have some quiet alone time downstairs. Given those specifications, I imagine nobody reading this will be surprised when I say that this doesn't happen often. When it does it is glorious and changes my whole entire day for the better. Someday, someday I will be able to make this happen more regularly.
Sigh. It's so peaceful when it happens. Tea, devotions, journaling, reading.
7:00- We still have our 'the day starts at 7' rule, meaning anybody awake before 7 can play or read quietly in their beds until they see the 7 on the clock, at which point they can come out to start the day. More and more lately, the only one awake prior to 7 and coming out at 7 is Kate. The boys and Anna tend to sleep later (or Sam will get up at 7 and opt to stay in bed reading until 7:30). If I haven't been up since 6:30 I'll try to snag a little quiet reading time in my bed for a few minutes before getting up and getting myself ready. Alternatively, I just sleep til 7:30, read for 5 minutes (I just like to start my day by reading a page or two at least, it just sets a good tone) and then get ready. I've learned this year that I am my most productive self if I immediately wash my face, brush my teeth, make my bed, fix my hair, and get dressed in the morning. I used to wait until after breakfast, but now as soon as my feet hit the floor I do this routine. Even on mornings where I've had less than 5 hours of sleep and I feel horrible, washing my face and getting my bed made performs some magic on me and I feel like I can at least shuffle through the day.
While I'm doing this, kids are slowly waking up and going to play. Sometimes if Anna wakes up and I'm not quite ready yet, one or two of the bigger kids will go in her room and sit and talk to her. I love it. It's the sweetest thing and so helpful! Once I'm ready for the day, I run downstairs and put away the dishes on the drying rack from dinner the previous night, open up the curtains (if Kate hasn't already, that's a morning job she does really like to do since she's usually the first kid up), and wash any dishes James left behind (usually just the coffee pot and the knife he used for his bagel). Then I go up to nurse Anna in her room before bringing her down to play with the big kids who are, by now, playing in the playroom. I get breakfast made while they play and wander in and out of the kitchen to tell me about something from a dream they had, or a fact they'd just read (Sam), or ask what we had to do that day.
8:30/9ish- Breakfast on the table and, on school days, we read our Bible reading, our daily devotional, some poetry, and pray and practice a memory verse together. I'm usually multitasking and making my breakfast while we do this reading and sit down to eat after they've all finished. Sam and Kate go upstairs to do their morning chores (get dressed, pjs on their dresser or the hamper depending upon whether or not they'd worn them twice yet, make their beds, brush their teeth, and Sam cleans the upstairs bathroom sink). Henry goes to play in the playroom and Anna usually sits on my lap and shares my breakfast and my tea. I read a little while I eat and then wash the dishes and get Henry and Anna dressed. If Anna has been especially.... creative... with her breakfast, she gets a sink bath. (Bananas = hair gel to this girl)
9:30/10ish- The kids pick up the playroom a little. Mostly they just need to be sure the desk is clear and there's a little free space on the floor. They bring in two chairs from the dining room that we need and I get our pile of books for that day. We aim to start by 10, but if they're playing really nicely and/or I'm really into whatever I'm reading that morning, sometimes we start a little later.
10ish- This is our school 'block' of time. I make an effort to be home for a morning school block of time at least 3x a week, but ideally 4. We start with something called Swedish Drill which is basically a more structured Simon Says. We have started school days with gross motor activities for a few years now. It's a really great way to start a school day with at least halfway decent attitudes. Then, now that Kate is doing little bits of Kindergarten work, I start trading off who I work with. First I'll do some letter games with Kate (usually while nursing Anna) while Sam independently works on his copywork. Then I do a reading and narration with Sam while Kate does something in her binder (no real structure for her there, she might write letters she knows, or draw a picture, or play a matching game with clothespins, and sometimes she just goes to play dolls). Then Sam and I go over his math lesson and he works independently on that and does a page in his cursive workbook while I read a few books to Henry and Kate. Then another reading and narration with Sam while everybody else plays or listens in. By then we're pretty much finished. Anything else we save for later in the day. We stack the schoolbooks on my desk and everybody scatters to play.
11:30ish- Once we're finished school we might have a snack, or run a quick errand (I now try to schedule all of our errands on one, non-school day, but sometimes we might need to run out after school for just one small thing). If the weather is nice we'll go outside, or just the big kids will go outside and I'll stay in with the littles. This is my time to workout and do my weekly chore for that day and sometime in there I nurse Anna. If I'm lucky I'll snag a quick shower after my workout.
12:30- Lunch. During lunch I read something else for school, or we work on French words, or they do their artist or composer study. Once they're finished eating they go clean up the toys and race me while I wash lunch dishes and clean up the school books. Racing me makes them do a better job. Some days it's like pulling teeth to get them to pick up any toys at all, but some days it happens quickly and smoothly.
1:30/2ish- The big kids are settled in the playroom with the door closed and I take Anna up for a nap. When she's down I make my lunch and sit down to eat while I read or watch a show (though tv is pretty rare for me lately). The big kids come out of the playroom to ask me questions or for help fixing something/breaking up a fight, or to tell me about a bird they saw at the feeder approximately 40000 times so 'quiet time' isn't as quiet for me as it once was, but it's a good chance to recharge.
3- If we have any other (quiet) work for school, we'll do it now. Painting or drawing in their nature journals, or sewing or paper folding are good things to do now while Anna is asleep. In nice weather the big kids will go outside (and Henry is now allowed to go too, as long as he stays on the swing set where I can see him). I read a little more, or start a little dinner prep, or fold laundry, or I go outside with them. Once or twice a week I'll put on a movie for them around now.
4- I wake Anna up from her nap and nurse her. This is when we get the keyboard out for Sam to watch a piano lesson or just to practice, but not everyday. It's pretty random and sporadic actually. I'm hoping to structure this a little more in the new year. Everybody is playing now and I'm starting to prep for the evening. Dinner prep, finishing the weekly cleaning chores, tidying up any mess I made during quiet time, prep for the next day or week of school, catching up on emails (or, at this time of year, doing some online Christmas shopping), working on a menu or grocery list, finishing bullet journal spreads or filling in our schedules if it's the end of the month, working on our budget or paying bills, just busy work. Or Anna wakes up clingy, nurses forever, and then we snuggle a bit.
4:45- Around now I really like to have a snack and a cup of tea before starting dinner. A moment of zen because the rest of the day is going to be nonstop and a little chaotic just because once 5 o'clock hits something happens and kids get crazy.
5:00- I start dinner. Most days I put a Spotify playlist on the tv and the kids are running laps around the house and having a dance party while I cook. Sometimes I play a podcast for myself, sometimes I read while I'm cooking if I'm in the middle of something super good. If I haven't folded that day's laundry yet, I often try to do it at some point while dinner is cooking. The kitchen is the best place to fold laundry lately because Anna can't reach up onto the counter to "help". I do one load of our clothes every night, so it doesn't take long at all to fold it. If I have a timer going for something that's part of dinner, I race the timer while I fold. That makes me sound super weird probably.
Sometimes when they're not running around they sit like this in the hallway next to the kitchen.
5:45/6- We eat. Sometimes James is home, sometimes he's not. I used to try to plan dinnertime around when he would be home, but it seems to work better to just have it ready by 6 and then we either eat with him or without him. Eating later just makes bedtime a mess.
6:15/6:30- If James is home he cleans up dinner (because he's awesome) and packs his lunch and breakfast for the next day. We keep the kids in the playroom so we can have a little time to talk to one another without constant interruption (though we still end up being interrupted a whole lot, but such is life right now). If the laundry still isn't folded I fold while we talk and he cleans up. The house is loud at this time of day. The kids are all the way wound up and I always have music on. I try to play more relaxing classical music from dinnertime on. Sometimes it works, but a lot of times it doesn't. It helps me feel calmer though, so, there's that.
6:50- Here we go. It's bedtime. The kids have had several warnings (10 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes) to which they always cheerfully reply, "Okay!", but it's almost never actually okay and, "It's time to clean up and get ready for bed!" is usually met with, "Awwwww! No! Not now! We haven't had enough time to play!" (You all have just read the description of their day. Tell me they don't have enough time to play *eye roll*) Just like after lunch, sometimes clean up happens easily and quickly, sometimes it's a nightmare. Sometimes Sam and Kate are trucking along, doing great, and then Henry comes along and dumps the whole Duplo bin because he, "just needed that one piece for a minute!" Although lately Henry is starting to be a little more helpful during clean up time, a lot of evenings I take him upstairs along with Anna and he looks at books in her room while she's in her crib with books and I'm putting away the laundry.
7:15/7:30- The playroom is hopefully clean by now (we are really working hard at cleaning things up when we're finished with them, before getting new things out and they don't have many toys in the playroom to begin with so, as long as there isn't a whole lot of whining and/or goofing off, they are capable of cleaning up super quickly). Sam and Kate get their pjs on and brush their teeth and either James or I do Henry and Anna. I love the nights when James is home to help out with dinner clean up and bedtime, but it's not a given so I've gotten pretty efficient doing it all myself. If it's a bath night for the little two, I give them a bath while the big kids are finishing up downstairs. On shower nights I help Kate after she's finished in the playroom and then Sam showers after her (just needs help with his hair) or I do their showers on separate nights for my sanity's sake. The days of bathing everybody on the same night are past for now. It was too chaotic. It works better to spread them out.
7:40ish- Ideally everybody is ready for bed by now and they've put their dirty clothes in the basket I've left in the hallway. I run downstairs and throw that in the washer and then go back up and read a few books to them in Anna's room. If James is home he takes her so she doesn't yell and climb all over everybody, or try to snatch the book out of my hand. Anna is not her best self at this time of day.
8- In bed. Henry nurses for a couple minutes (though he and I are talking about not doing this anymore after Christmas). Sam and Kate may have their reading lights on as long as they are quiet and don't stay up too late. We don't have an official "lights out" time for them, but we may need to implement one soon because Sam is starting to stay up pretty late reading some nights. After a couple minutes, I have laid Henry down and I go get Anna. If James is working super late, she's been in her crib this whole time (if she's fussy Sam will sit in there with her because she isn't always okay with being alone, and then he goes to bed once I come in). If James is home he and Anna are snuggling downstairs or in our bed. I nurse and rock her and she's usually down by 8:30.
8:30/8:45- I go downstairs to switch the laundry to the dryer and then I either sit on the couch with James, reading while he watches tv, or I just go upstairs to read in bed (and James usually follows) because I'm totally beat and want to be able to pass out right away after a chapter or two. Our evenings are not very exciting right now. James works very hard and my days (and nights) with the kids are very full. The other night we were both in bed with the lights off, half asleep already, by 9. If we're a little less sleepy we'll watch something together or play a game (I can kick James' butt in Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit, but still he challenges me to a game)
So that's our day! Or our day 3-4 days a week anyway. I've been trying to be very intentional this year to make any out of the house activities on a non-school day and lump errands in then too. If we go on a field trip or something, we'll do a little school work in the afternoon so we're doing school 4 times a week. On Thursdays, we leave at 3:30 for ballet so that shortens quiet time, but since Kate has an early class this year we're home in time to not have to rush to get dinner on the table. 3 times a month Sam and James leave after dinner on Thursdays for Cub Scouts (and if James can't get home in time, I take all 4 to Scouts, but since that ends at 8, we try to avoid that). While they're there I put the other 3 to bed and Sam creeps into their room quietly when he gets home.
I'm really, really happy with the flow of our days lately. And by lately, I mean the past several months. It feels like we've found our groove. Not that there was anything wrong with our routines in the past, we've always been a very routine oriented family, but in the past I've felt a struggle to fit everything in and things would often slide. Usually working out, sometimes the weekly cleaning chores, often laundry. This current routine doesn't feel forced or crammed at all, but mostly things are getting done when they're supposed to. It feels good to wake up in the morning and already be able to see at least the bare bones of what the day will hold and to know that at the end of the day chores and tasks will be accomplished without ever having felt rushed. Most of the time anyway! Of course there are days where bedtime rolls around and it feels like a tornado came sweeping in while I was eating breakfast and, somehow, spit me out at 7:30 in the evening, the whole day a blur. But this that I've written up is what we strive for and what we achieve most days. I'm so grateful for our slow, quiet days. So grateful for how hard James works so that I can stay home. So grateful for our homeschooling curriculum which brings so much beauty through music, art, and literature to our days. And so, so grateful for this life I have and these people I get to do it with day in and day out.
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