This is my fourth year doing that fun social media challenge #onedayhh where you take a picture of your ordinary life every hour and post it on social media. (Two years ago I made the pictures in a blog post as well.)
Except that this year our Thursday wasn’t particularly ordinary with my husband Evan at parent-teacher conferences and us stuck inside with thunderstorms. Because of that, I didn’t actually post anything on social media, but I did manage to take pictures.
There is no way that I could have stopped to make instagram captions and post photos, every hour, and it not resulted in my kids getting themselves into the sort of mischief that leads to someone getting hurt and me yelling and everything spiraling. So I didn’t even try.
The main takeaway from the day was my kids are in a great stage, if I am 100% focused on them.
4:15 I wake up and write. (You can read more about that new habit here.) One of the best parts of my day. This morning I’m revising a draft of chapter 20. This means I’m untangling some confusing sentences describing a maypole dancing scene. I don’t have any new words for the word count at the end of it, but hopefully it makes a lot more sense. I also type up a response to an important text message a friend sent me in an email draft and then send it to myself so I can send it to her before the day gets crazy.
5:25 Normally I wait for Lily (age 2 1/2) to come in before I stop writing, but since Evan is going to be gone all day and Lily is sleeping in, I get up to make sure I can actually see Evan for a minute. Jackson (age 4 1/2) is up and helping him fix breakfast. I pitch in for a few minutes too and ask about everyone’s night.
5:45 Lily wakes up. She always comes out with her blanket and baby. Then we take her to the potty and celebrate a dry diaper. Then off to the nursey chair to nurse, and I get to read. First I read prayer from Divine Hours, and then I read more of my current read: The Lazy Genius Way.
6:15 Breakfast! Evan (with Jackson’s help) has made our usual breakfast eggs and sausage with onions, mushrooms, kale and spinach, served with a side of homemade sauerkraut. Lily is not a great breakfast eater (she does have a tummy full of milk) and nearly always ends up sitting on one of our laps to help her finish (or start) her bites. Jackson’s current obsession is talking about big numbers and learning to tell time. He announces the changing of the digital clock above our stove. He’s mostly pretty accurate about it, occasionally flipping 2s and 5s or making a 04 into a 40.
6:45 Evan leaves for the day. Lots of kisses and hugs and everyone reminding everyone else that this is a weird day of conferences and thunderstorms and we have to stay inside and Daddy will be home after we go to sleep.
7:00 Clean up time. I give the kids some yogurt and home made plum jam from my godmother. They eat that easily and happily without complaint as I load the dishwasher. Why can’t they eat their breakfast like that?
7:30 While I’m cleaning up the kids get themselves dressed. This rarely happens, especially on days with lots of snow gear and the need for particular layers of clothes. But again, we’re staying in, and I’m busy cleaning up, so they take on the task themselves. Jackson helps Lily and together they do the whole thing, minus one shirt on backwards, by themselves. I wouldn’t have put that many patterns together in an outfit…but I’m just happy they got themselves dressed.
8:00 Normally I do the bare minimum of clean up because it’s a bigger priority to get out the door. The earlier we leave for our walk, the earlier we can eat lunch and take a nap, which makes bedtime earlier and easier. However, today we aren’t going out because it’s pouring rain and 40 degrees, but more importantly bands of thunderstorms all morning. So I let myself putter a bit and do more clean up than normal. I make myself some decaf coffee and arrange the fall table center piece. We even get the vacuum out. I try and make the house company clean for ourselves: all the window curtains open, and the clutter put away, and the beds made up.
8:30 Things are starting to get loud and crazy with the kids, so I need to wrap up my cleaning and we’ve got to start to do our thing. Kids teeth brushed and I’ve got to get myself dressed and brush my teeth too. But in my cleaning zeal the door knob to the closet falls off. I announce I’m getting tools to fix it, and Lily gets hers out and spends the next 20 minutes “fixing the door” too. Hopefully she won’t pretend fix it until it breaks. Meanwhile Jackson does an alphabet puzzle and arranges it in “ABC” order. He’s very pleased with himself.
9:05 We start to “get some exercise out” as Jackson says. I put on a walking DVD that Jackson has a strange amount of affection for and we do a 12 minute walking in place mile with “Miss Leslie.” Lily mostly just lounges on the couch until she wants to be held, and then we get the ergo baby carrier out and I put her on my back.
9:20 Dancing time! The kids have three very favorite songs by Jordan Feliz and the Newboys. We rock out for a bit. And then do a second mile of the walking DVD, although by we I mostly mean me, and the kids lounge around and are mostly good sports about it.
10:00 We try a Cosmic Kids Yoga for the first time. We do a short little 20 minute one about The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. It’s charming and fun and the kids enjoy it. Then we get our copy out of The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and read it. Then I draw two big black marker butterfly outlines and the kids color them in. I feel on top of it: it’s like a whole coordinated home-school unit I didn’t even plan.
10:50 We read a pile of board books after Lily has a quick mid-morning nurse.
11:00 Nearly to lunchtime. I put a plate of Brussels sprouts in the microwave and we go downstairs to do basement things. The basement is normally Evan’s domain, where he plays with the kids while I’m cooking or cleaning up, so it’s a little unusual to have me be the one playing with the kids down there. We jump on the trampolines (there is a third one not secured to the foot of the bed for an adult to jump on), and find the foam block pogo stick. There are pogo sticks in our read aloud, so perhaps that’s why Jackson wants to find it. Lily wants a turn and can’t do it on her own. She flops down in agony. I help her up and help her do the pogo, 45 seconds from weeping to laughing in delight, a sign she needs a nap. We get the Ikea tunnel out and the kids are loud and crazy as they crawl through it a dozen time.
11:20 Upstairs and I put on a Daniel Tiger for the kids to watch while I make lunch. It’s our regular lunch of avocado, apple, salmon salad, and Brussels sprouts. I know that I’m going to need to work out during naptime to finish getting my steps in, so I let the kids watch more Daniel Tiger and I get my own lunch and read some blog posts on my phone, then I can read them a fun book while they eat their lunch.
12:00 Lunch time for the kids. I use a book stand and help Lily eat her bites. Today we read Out and About by Shirley Hughes. Jackson is really much too big for the booster chair and tray, but we have a counter height table so we’ve kept him in it, and he likes to be like Lily, but at his birthday next month, no more tray. He’s excited about that, but we also have said no more of us helping get bites on his fork. He doesn’t like to touch the food with his fingers much, and he’s been working hard to learn to eat his own bites. He’s pretty good about breakfast and lunch, unless he’s exceptionally tired for lunch, but dinner can still be a struggle.
12:30 Nap time. Jackson has to lay down and rest for a half hour, and then if he is still up he can come out and ask me for an audio book and some legos. I tell him today he has to wait until the big hand is at the 12 (ie. 1:00), since we only have an analog clock in our room. I nurse Lily to sleep listening to my current audio book Food: A Love Story by Jim Gaffigan.
12:45 Clean Up Time. I always want my nap time to be all work time, but a significant portion of it gets dedicated to just cleaning up. Today there is less clean up because we didn’t go outside, but normally there is a lot of putting coats and shoes and water bottles away. I listen to the latest Out of the Ordinary podcast while I hand wash booster seat trays and wipe down the table. I also cook a bunch of broccoli for dinner.
1:00 Jackson comes out for his story and legos. This means he hasn’t and won’t nap. This is bad news for my afternoon and good news for my night. He’ll be kind of crazy in the afternoon, but then crash hard and fall asleep really fast. Since I have to do bedtime all by myself, I am fine with this trade off.
1:15 I do a little bit of admin, emailing people at church about gluten free communion. Then, I put on a couple episodes of the office (Season 3, the previous and upcoming episodes The Office Ladies Podcast are covering) and do a walking workout while I watch.
2:00 Jackson comes out. I check the weather and since it seems that thunderstorms have passed, I decide we’ll walk to the library when Lily gets up, and I can finish getting my steps in that way. Jackson and I sit down and do some “special Jackson and Mommy activities.” He chooses phonics today, so we do a bit from Phonics Pathways and then do his reading blocks. We’ve mostly been doing handwriting the past month during our afternoon non-nap special time, but he’s excited about the reading today. Then we read the new to us but wonderful classic Fall picture book, The Ox-Cart Man.
2:30 We wake Lily up. Back in the nursey chair and reading more TumTum and Nutmeg. We finish book two: The Great Escape.
3:00 Activity time. Normally this is when we do some sort of math manipulative, and today it’s unifix cubes.
3:15 Music Time. Usually on Thursdays the kids do a zoom music lesson with my mom, but she and my dad are on the road back to Arizona, so it’s just regular music time with me today. We sit at the piano, sing a familiar song, then sing it with fixed-do solfège. Sometimes Lily sings and sometimes she doesn’t, but when she does she likes to sing “do, rei, mia” because Mia is the name of one of her cousins. We sing through “Are You Sleeping Brother John,” “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” “Jack and Jill” “Rock A Bye Baby” and a song my mom made up called “Up a Big Tall Hill!”
3:50 We get dressed, pretty quickly because it’s not raining very hard and it’s going to be a quick trip. As soon as we get outside it starts to rain (softly) again.
4:20 We get the library and put our masks on outside, only to see that it’s closed because of construction. Fortunately the books on hold for us will still be there later, and the kids aren’t too disappointed.
4:40 On the way home the rain is light enough they want to walk. They play a running hugging game that sometimes ends in a tackle and tears, but today is just happiness.
5:00 Home to make dinner. We have the broccoli I cooked up at naptime and a bunch of left overs from earlier in the week. I suppose you could say we batch cook on the weekends, at least we do that with our meat. And I have been on a try to incorporate more of a variety of fruits and vegetables (30 a week!) kick after I listened to a recent episode of one of my favorite science and nutrition podcasts (the whole view), so instead of just sweet potatoes, I’ve been cooking up regular potatoes, carrots, and sweet potatoes and adding a can of organic pumpkin. And instead of just broccoli, adding other roasted veggies along side.
So it’s just reheating and plating, but still I need the kids to not run around crazy while I do it. I get out our picnic table art cloth to let them color with markers while I prep dinner. This seems against my better judgement since Lily usually has a 4 minute attention span which hardly will justify the setup and clean up, but surprisingly they don’t make a mess and stay focused on markers for 20 minutes and I get dinner prepped.
5:30 We eat. Or I eat, and they take a few bites. But I finish and get out the book Mighty Mighty Dads and read a page and give them both a bite on their forks. Somehow, that miracle of toddlerhood occurs where they couldn’t possibly eat anymore dinner on their own, but have no trouble with a cookie. We like these thin coconut ones from Aldi.
6:15 Time to clean up. This is where we especially feel Evan being gone. This is normally the time when he takes the kids downstairs to play for an hour while I clean up and get ready for bed. I give the kids a firm talking to about needing to play calmly and quietly, and get the bin of legos out. Jackson then proceeds to get annoyed that Lily is rifling through the legos so loudly (legos can be surprisingly loud), so after I dump the whole lego bin out, things are more peaceful.
6:45 I take a quick shower. I wash my hair on the weekends, so my nighttime week day showers can be really fast, and before I get out I start filling up the tub with water. I try and make the bathwater as cold as I possibly can stand it, but the kids still think the bathwater is “too hot.” They like very tepid baths. I brush my teeth and do the rest of my nighttime routine next to the kids in the bath. My step count ended up being higher than normal with that walk to the library, impressive for a rainy day.
7:15 Jammies and Nighttime stories. This is often a very abbreviated story time, but tonight we have gotten to bed earlier than normal so we read a couple extra stories.
7:45 Both kids are asleep and I head to bed so I can get up and write early. Evan should be home in an hour, a little bit of me thinks it would be sweet to wait up for him, but honestly he has a whole fumigation routine after coming home from work that takes a half hour before he gives anyone hugs and kisses. The next day he said he gave me a kiss when he came into get clean clothes from our closet. I was totally out and don’t remember him even coming in, but it makes me happy that is the way my day ended.
