DITL. Homeschool edition.

7:00am Sutton wakes me up. She asks for milk and to watch something. I turn on Little Angel and give her milk, hoping it'll buy me another 30 minutes. No luck. She's back in 10, saying she wants a pancake. Scott is still asleep so I also go down to the basement and feed the dogs. 

While the pancake is warming up, I get out the very sticky bottle of syrup (these people cannot keep a syrup bottle clean and I don't know how to solve this problem). I make coffee and here comes Wells, asking for a pancake. They're leftover from yesterday. It's not even 7:30 and this is, regrettably, "sleeping in" for my kids. We were up til 11pm watching the Bills/Ravens game the night before. I also had not cleaned up the kitchen before bed. Great start to a Monday and my allergies are killing me after a day outside at the zoo on Sunday. 

"Who closed?"

Also they both like their pancake different ways, I can never quite remember, and someone is always unhappy (Sutton: cut up, to dip in syrup. Wells: NOT cut up, syrup on top but "not soggy").

7:45am  Everyone is settled, so I sit down at my computer to do a few things and look over my to-do list for the day. I also drink coffee at this point and start in on folding the laundry I've been ignoring for days. 

I always set the homeschool work out the night before but it gets pushed aside and they watch tv and play until about 9am. (This doesn't and won't bother me but this is not how the internet tells you to homeschool, you know?)

9:00am Wells sits down to do his independent work and so does Sutton. She lasts about 10 minutes. He usually finishes as fast as possible but for the first time ever, he's really into the drawing/sketching part and he goes for like an hour with it. 

At some point in here, I gave up with Sutton and she takes the iPad to go watch something. She  asks me for food multiple times, Unfortunately, grocery pick-up is coming up so we don't have her favorites on hand. Wells and I eat leftover pizza (my breakfast) and then she settles in to draw. We painfully finish Language Arts around 11:45. It was a very hard morning. Mondays aren't great and it makes me rethink taking Fridays off for co-op. We lose too much momentum with a 3-day weekend. 

11:30am I switch out laundry, clean out the fridge, run the dishwasher, and then get ready while Wells does his independent reading time. 

12:00pm I pack up all the dog things and we go for our walk. The park is a 5 minute drive and it's flat and fine for a 3 year old so that's why I do this route. This includes prepping a backpack with water, bags, dish, electronic collars, leashes, remote...it's an undertaking but I've streamlined it. But since Sunday Kristin had not cleaned out the car or the backpack after the zoo trip, Monday Kristin had to spend extra time dealing with that today. 

12:45pm Head home from the park and drop off the dogs. I make Wells gather up the toys he left all over the yard the night before and deliver a stray shoe to his friend's house (yes, a shoe) and then we go to Walmart for our grocery pick-up. Blessedly, this is also a less than 10 minute drive. We go in the store because I forgot to add Flonase to my order and then we also looked at shoes. Then we pick-up and go to the post office to drop off a Poshmark box for an item I sold. 

1:45pm Get home, unpack, make lunch (they eat pb&j and crackers and fruit just about every day because that's what they want)

2:30pm Wells does his math work, independently. I'm pushing him through quickly to get to the more challenging curriculum I bought a couple of weeks ago, so we're doing 2 lessons a day. Sutton falls asleep on the couch. I check the math and then I take a quick nap while Wells plays. I try to get him to watch a Youtube video about Mars (we're supposed to be studying space but I don't like the curriculum) but he doesn't want to. 

3:45pm The neighbor kids get home from school and Wells shoots out the door with his walkie-talkie. This means I have to be awake and I know I will not see him til dinner. They ride scooters, play in backyards, build things, dig holes, whatever. I start prepping dinner and pull out cookie dough I'd planned to bake the other day and never got around to doing. 

4:10pm Scott gets home. He quickly takes Sutton outside and grills the chicken I have ready. He has a meeting online at 5:00 so he hides out in the basement. Sutton watches a read aloud and plays some games on The Good and the Beautiful app while I make dinner and talk on the phone. I also bake those cookies. Eventually she goes out in the backyard with the other kids and they catch a toad and make him a habitat in a bucket (no idea where this toad is currently residing). Sutton also helps me feed the dogs. 

I make this pasta salad a lot. I don't like artichokes so I substituted broccoli this time. Usually I just leave them out. 

6:00pm I eat dinner, I make plates for the kids, Scott eats and then takes Sutton outside to do some things with him. She eats strawberries and a banana. Wells eats what I give him. He goes back outside. I work on cleaning up the kitchen while I listen to Ben Shapiro on The Breakfast Club. 

6:30pm Scott goes out for a motorcycle ride and I get Sutton into the tub by giving her a cookie and she plays in there for at least an hour. I'm cleaning up the kitchen, the floor, etc. Scott comes home and I convince him to hang these shelves in Sutton's room by asking nicely and also saying it's "for Sutton". This works. 

7:21pm The battle of getting Wells into the house begins. His friends are outside. He wants to play. He will not come in without a fight. It's really hard to say no to this rationale. They ride their scooters until dark (8pm) and finally he comes in at 8:22. He can't get the garage door shut. Scott has to go look at it. The trailer is blocking it. 

8:20pm I get Sutton to brush her teeth and into bed. We read one book. She calls me back in multiple times. It's Wells' turn to play in the tub for an hour (apparently). I work on this post.

9:00pm Wells is out of the tub and onto second dinner. This happens every night and drives me insane because it means he never gets to bed. He barely eats earlier because he's busy playing so, post-bath, he always eats again. 

9:20pm Scott and I watch the last episode of School Spirits, season 2 (because the Bears and the Vikings are completely uninteresting on MNF) and I do some stretching on the floor. He falls asleep, I research science curriculum for a bit and then go to bed by 11:00. 

At least I went to bed with a clean kitchen. 

The non-trad wife.

I read a twitter thread the other day about a stay-at-home-wife and how she fills her time. She accomplishes more by 7am than I do in a week, essentially. Oh, to be that domestically-driven.

I'll tell you what I did when I was a stay-at-home-wife (with a deployed husband). I slept til 10am. I'd go to the gym with a friend. I'd maybe have lunch out or go to a Bible study in the evening or go shopping at the mall downtown. I'd eat cookies and watch The Bachelor in the evening. 

I kind of wish I were kidding but that's how I filled my time post-getting married and moving to Alaska and pre-blog when Scott was deployed in 2009-2010. 

After I got a job, I was busier and happier and life was much better because I had much to fill my time while he was always working. Because then he deployed again and I needed all of that to keep me going. 

In the summers, I'd fall back into my pattern of gym-shop-clean-cook-blog-TV-books and I was always bored. Always. 

Once having kids, life was different. 

But, basically, my life as a SAHM is not quite so industrious as hers...

8am- wake up. husband has already made himself breakfast and is walking out the door for work as I'm getting the baby out of bed. I had handed the 5 year old the iPad at 7am so he could watch something while I slept in. :D 

i "make" cheerios for the 5 year old and make an egg for the 1 year old and also hand her a banana.

start prepping for a park playdate.

drive to the park with two kids and my two bags of whatever we may need while arriving only 9 minutes late :D 

12:00noon arrive back home after a few hours at the park and splash pad. make lunch. pb&j, fruit, and zucchini bread. after cleaning everything up, the kids watch tv and play while I eat chips and hummus and drink topo chico while coming across a twitter thread on how an industrious SAHW spends her day. get the idea for this post.

1:30pm after doing a few things around the house (who knows what), i put the one year old down for a nap, tell the 5 year old to be good, and go outside to weed-eat and cut grass while i have some time. also set up a kiddie pool in the backyard. 

2:30pm take a quick shower and do whatever around the house. waste time on social media.

3:00pm start dinner, wake the baby up, snacks (strawberries). take everyone outside to the "pool".

4:30pm finish dinner after coming inside. kids play independently. consider using this pocket of time to dig out my lesson planning materials or do some pilates. i don't. 

5pm feed everyone. then baths.

7pm husband gets home. almost immediately has to leave again to run an errand.

8pm both kids are asleep. consider digging out my lesson planning materials or doing some pilates. i don't. clean up the kitchen and fold laundry instead. vacuum the living room. 

9pm husband is home. my whole body hurts from my minimal hard labor of the last few days (outside work, hiking with the stroller). pull out lesson planning materials and do a few things while watching Suits until 11pm. 

never did get to pilates, yoga, putting *all* the clothes away, writing blog posts, or reading a book. 

*not included: the multiple podcasts i listened to throughout the day, the many diaper/clothes changes, the multiple picking-up and putting away of things, the many dishes i washed, the dog duties, the phone calls and text msgs and emails that comprise a day. also the multiple negotiations over everything with a 5 year old, which takes up at least half my day and all of my mental bandwidth. 

**this was just a random tuesday. monday had been more organizated as i'd had a book group in the morning and a dentist appointment in the afternoon. much less free time. 

DAY IN THE LIFE.

That's all caps because I haven't done one in a very long time and I definitely haven't done one with Wells around...get ready:

(In case you're curious, this is what a DITL post looked like two years ago.)

This was originally supposed to be a whole day but it was exhausting to attempt that and I was met with a sense of what I can only describe as overwhelming defeat around 5pm, so here we are. A morning-and-early-afternoon-in-the-life-of...

6:11am Wells is screaming "mamamamamama" which he only does in the middle of the night or in the early morning. I walk the 5 feet to his room (I do not recommend a basic ranch house with the bedrooms next to each other if you have a baby). I try to give him a bottle but he won't take it, so I change him because he's soaked and put a new sleepsack on him. He still refuses the bottle.
I go back to bed and he's still yelling. I block it out and eventually he goes back to sleep. I knew he wanted up but there's no way I can function. I made the horrible decision of watching The Bachelorette until 10, and then reading for an hour last night. I also forgot to drink water before I went to bed and having a baby is a bit like being hungover all the time so if you don't drink water before bed, it's so much worse in the morning. Also, he'd been up 3 (THREE) times throughout the night, so there's that. I got up with him once or twice and Scott had once or twice. I don't really remember.

7am-ish Scott gets up and leaves for work.

8am I wake up. Brush teeth, put in contacts (realizing I had forgotten to put contact solution in my case??? so I had to dig out new contacts), let the dogs out, make coffee, pick up things from the night before, and finally go get Wells, who is yelling again.

(If I were smart..or well-rested...I would get up before him so I do something meaningful with my morning time, but I just can't give up sleep right now.)

8:25am Wells does always wake up happy and when he sees us, he's even happier. I change him and put him down in his play area with his nursery rhymes show on and he starts pulling out toys.

8:30am Start writing this post, check email, go over Google Calendar for the next few days. I am surviving by Google Calendar these days. It has all my reminders and it so much easier than paper calendars or planners right now. Send a few text messages, check Instagram, and Twitter. Drink coffee.

8:50am Make breakfast for Wells and give the dogs their antibiotics and their breakfast. Jett is distracted.

9:00am Eat breakfast.

9:15am Put Wells in the tub and read while he splashes around.

9:30am Wells plays in his room and crawls all around while I put clothes away and pull out his outfit for the day.

10:00am More crawling, more playing, etc. I basically just follow him around until he looks like he's ready for a nap. I know we have a set amount of time for tasks today if we're going to get to his playgroup on time.

10:30am Wells gets a bottle and I change his bedding. He goes down for a nap without a fight which is different than the last few days so PTL. I clean up the kitchen and wash all the bottles.

11:00am Get a shower. Make up the bottles for the day/night while listening to a podcast.

11:30am Prep Wells' lunch and squeeze in 15 minutes of Pilates. Try to cut the dog's toenails. He doesn't cooperate, so I'll have to ask Scott to do it later.

Our living room is too small.

12:09pm Wells wakes up. Change him and put him in the car and drive the dogs to the park to walk. We leave the house at 12:19. We get to the park, walk the trail we always do, and drive home. We get back at 1:15. It almost always takes exactly one hour, depending on traffic.

1:15 Plop Wells in his highchair and he eats lunch while I get dressed and put make-up on. The reason I picked a Tuesday for this post is because we actually go somewhere on Tuesdays. Of course, I knew when he woke up late from that nap that we'd be late getting to his playgroup. It's just a gamble I have to take because I can't not walk the dogs or skip feeding him lunch these days. Life was easier when it was just bottles all day, every day.

1:45pm We're more or less cleaned up and ready to go. The place we go to is about 15 minutes away, depending on traffic, and it's come and go as you need to from 1:30-3:30. Most people show up at 1:30 and leave early, but I'm more likely to get there late and leave on time. Anyway...no pictures of that yesterday. But it was a very nice mix of younger babies around 8/9/10 months and not those 14/15 month olds who run circles around Wells and are so loud. This was the calmest he's ever been there because he wasn't overly-intimidated.

Post-playgroup, bags in hand, because I forgot to take a picture before we left. 

Also, I hadn't washed his hands yet, so he was getting all the germs off of it, I suppose. : / 

After that, Wells took a nap and it was all downhill and I was exhausted.

Any time he's left alone with the vacuum in sight, he figures out a way to get to it. 

Linking up with Jenn!

A summer Monday

I wrote a day-in-the-life post awhile back and it was so mind-numbingly depressing that I never published it. It basically encompassed what January to the middle of May looked like and it was gross. Basically: get up early, work all day, attempt to better myself, fail at that (more on this later), walk the dogs, eat dinner alone while watching t.v., husband gets home between 8pm-midnight. Alarms start going off at 4:30am the next morning (PT and such).

No one wants to rehash that...certainly not me, because with Scott leaving and the end of the school year, it got worse before it got better. It's almost "better" now.

THIS is the typical summer day for a stay-at-home-dog-mom (my summer occupation).

The one day I have somewhere to be before 9am, the dogs sleep in. They had me up at 6am for the last several days in a row. I get up at 7:09 and get everything packed up and ready to go to the vet. Drink coffee and water while I read a few blogs. I can't eat breakfast until I've been up for at least an hour, so I forego that.

Leave the house, with doggie supply bag, for vet appointment.

Vet appointment. Just burn cash money in a bonfire and that's basically what a yearly vaccination appointment looks like for us.

Wrangle the dogs back into the truck. Go to the dog park because I want to tire them out without worrying about rattlesnakes in our field. I'm so freaking sick of worrying about rattlesnakes.

Eat a protein bar while the dogs play. Jett stands beside me and makes friends with the toddlers who are there with their moms and dogs. I'm always shockingly impressed with this ginger when he's around kids. He stood there and let a couple of the little kids hug him and pet him and I didn't for a second worry about him getting spooked or snapping. He's just so patient in this way with people, and I told Scott about it.

Scout does whatever he wants because that's how Scout is.

Stop for gas and arrive home around noon. Kick myself for not taking the empty gas containers with me...I need to get gas in order to mow this week.

Eat lunch. (eggs/bacon/avocado/chips)

Take care of some online to-do list tasks (RF stuff, paperwork, etc)

Listen to a podcast (48 minutes) and see how many chores I can get done in that time.

Make a smoothie (I manage to cram 70+ grams of protein into smoothies these days).

Look for a new library book online. Find none. Decide this isn't productive.

Drive the 2 miles to the mailbox. Nothing good.

Finish a book and then try to take a nap.

It doesn't work. I think I feel kind of sick and dehydrated because 1. This altitude when it's warm out, 2. I think I tried to accomplish too much outside before noon (I'm convinced this is a real thing).

Watch a few re-runs of Weeds.

Cautiously walk the dogs, watching for snakes.

Water all the plants.

Finish the laundry.

Contemplate dinner but I still feel kind of sick. Drink a ginger ale instead.

Re-runs of Weeds and write this blog post.

Take a shower.

30 minutes of s-l-o-w Pilates.

Protein shot, popsicle, and crackers because eating something is sometimes necessary.

Bed.

Believe it or not, this is a million times more interesting and full of more accomplishments than a typical workday that's a Monday. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing? The nice thing is that there's plenty more Mondays left in summer. 

A day in the life…

5am  Alarm goes off.  I turn it off and shuffle dogs around so I can turn the light on.  I really hate waking up this early, but I need to get moving slowly.  I don't do "quick" before 10am.

5:10 Let the dogs out, brush teeth, put in contacts, make coffee.  Let dogs in.

5:15-5:45  Catch up on emails, drink coffee, chip away at pile of schoolwork I left on the table last night.  I don't get very far.  Listen to the news.  

6:00  Getting ready for school…feeding the dogs, packing lunch, cleaning things up.

7:00  Leave the house. The above photo shows how I try to gather up everything I need for the day…

7:36  Get to work.  Have a few conversations, do some grading (that I should've done the night before), set things up, etc.  

8:35  Crosswalk duty.

9:00  Pick up kids.

9:40  Read aloud and Science project presentations.

9:40-10:15  Prep period.  Eat a Larabar, continue with the grading. In the one year I spent in 2nd grade, I'd forgotten how much grading 4th grade actually involves.  It's never-ending. Answer questions for people who are always randomly stopping by.  

10:15-12:00  Reading.  Test for them, pocket of planning time for me.  Go over test.  Meet with feedback groups while the rest do center work.  

12:00-12:35  Math.  Decimals and place value.  Go over homework.  Give a quiz, meticulously explaining directions in a way that makes it seem like it'd just be easier to do it together.  Go over quiz.  Give homework.  

12:35  Lunch/Recess.  I stop to talk to the nurse and return a phone call.  I eat half my salad around 12:50 and check to see if my teammate can cover my afternoon crosswalk duty.  I have an eye appointment right after school.

1:05  More math.  Games, puzzles, fact practice.

2:00  More science project presentations (This is what was unusual about yesterday.  Usually this is writing/centers time.)

3:00-3:20  More science stuff.  I could explain things in detail, but do you really want to read my lesson plans?  Didn't think so.

3:30 Bell rings.  

3:40  Leave for the eye doctor.

4:00  Arrive exactly on time and fill out paperwork.

4:40  Leave the eye doctor. Stop for gas.  I have to come back for a followup next week to make sure my new prescription is okay.  I've been wearing contacts since I was 12.  I think I'll be okay.  

5:30  Arrive home, let out the dogs, feed them, try on new dress from Loft that was waiting at the front door, take outfit picture.

5:54  Pour a glass of wine and try to comment on all the Stuff and Things posts.  Try not to take it personally that the linkup size has doubled since Joey started co-hosting with me.  Contemplate dinner.

6:20  Go outside and realize that Scout has wedge himself halfway under the fence.  Upon further inspection, realize they've been trying to dig their way out of this prison.  Put some big landscaping rocks in the holes.  

6:25  Make dinner.  Another chicken salad and sweet potatoes.

7:00ish  Eat while Scout whines.  Repeatedly let him and Jett in and out.  I hate letting them out in the dark.  

7:20 Paint my nails. I'm desperately trying to let my nails grow so that means I have to keep polish on them.  Piddle around the kitchen and the internet for a bit.  

By 8:00pm, I'm ready for bed.  Especially by Thursday night.  I think the dogs have had it with this week too.  I'll attempt an ab workout before bed though.

Scout was mad at me, so he threw the pillows on the floor.  

This is something he really does when he's irritated.  

Happy Friday!  Eat some candy corn since it's the Candy Corn Holiday.