Work vs. Play

It was a Wednesday morning and we had some snow to be shoveled.  I enjoy shoveling snow and I hadn’t done any yet this year and I knew we were going to be gone that night and I didn’t want Jesse to be outside snow blowing at 9pm when we got home.  Our neighbors are so thankful we moved into the neighborhood.  Jesse does a great job of keeping them on their toes.  Snowmobiling late at night.  Mowing lawn late at night.  Why else do they put headlights on these machines… for people like Jesse!  Working on his snowmobile and dirtbike after hours and then having to see if all his work paid off and taking them out and going for a spin! 

I packed everyone up and we went out and got to work. 

Mallory shoveled the entire sidewalk.  While Max did one scoop and he was done.

He climbed around and played.

Mallory didn’t even let him be a distraction to her.  She kept right on working.  Where Max eventually wanted a scooter and a bike to ride.

I bundled up Melanie in a ton of layers and little snow suit a friend let me borrow.  She was cozy warm.  She enjoyed the fresh air as much as the rest of us.

Mornings… Love - Hate

One of the perks of staying home and homeschooling… I create my own schedule.  I don’t have to be anywhere in the mornings.  However, I am a very scheduled/routine person.  Therefore my goal each day is start school at 9.  Kids roll out of bed around 7 and that gives them time to eat breakfast, get ready for the day, and play before we start.

For me though I was letting the kids wake me every day.  I love my kids to the moon and back, but having them as my alarm clock each day was just making me feel like I never was getting a break.

Also my sweet baby girl does not sleep all night long yet.  So I wanted every last second of sleep I could get. 

It was making me cranky.  Kids constantly waking me up.  When can I just wake up when I want to wake up?! 

So to get that I have to set an alarm and get up before them.  And my kids’ super power is sensing that someone is awake, so I have to bust out my inner stealth and sneak and tip toe and pray for no morning sneezes and sit and not move.  I take the 45 minutes to read quietly and drink hot coffee.  It makes me ready for them when they wake up.

The downfall of getting up early is my one mug of coffee is consumed before 8am… I like going to school with a cup of coffee so now I am drinking two cups!!  I try to fight it… but this frigid cold weather doesn’t help that.

Toe Chewing

I have moments of - I need to take more pictures of Melanie.  And this must have been a day where I was feeling like she needed her life to be documented.

I don’t find myself putting her on the floor very much.  1) We don’t have carpet.  A non-carpeted floor is super hard!  B) I constantly have kids running and jumping and not watching where they are going.  I have a fear she will trampled.

Something about the toe chewing stage!  Love!

Then it was over.  She rolled over and tried to get my camera.

A day in the life

A challenge was put out there by my photography club.  I just attend the club to get away.  I don’t actually take amazing pictures.  It is purely social for me.  And how fun is it to say I am in a photography club?!  Oh the challenge… capture your entire day in photos.  So… sit down because this is a picture filled post!  The pictures are not going to be amazing as one in a photography club should have.  For me this challenge was to just take the pictures.  Next time I will work on the pretty pictures.

Monday, February 2, 2015

6:00am – Alarm…Snooze

I am trying to become a morning person.  I feel like I can be a much better mom if I can get up before the kids and have a moment to myself.

6:05am – Alarm…Snooze

I would like to be a morning runner.  But I have this fear of the dark.  It is still dark out this early.  And it is dark at night when I would have time to go.  And I also have this fear of being kid napped.  I know.  There are not many kid nappers out there on the prowl for a 30-something mom with three kids.  The thought crosses my mind though.  And so I don’t run.

6:10am – Alarm.  I need to figure how to make these snoozes longer then 5 minutes!  I am up! 

Guess who else is up?!  Miss Melanie!  She has me trained so well that all she has to do is grunt 6 times and I am fetching a bottle for her.  So I give her a bottle.  I don’t even pick her up out of bed.  I leave her in her crib, give her a bottle, and hover over her until I hear her sucking air and switch it with the nuk and she is off back to sleep.

I make a cup of coffee, grab my blanket and my current bible study book and sit down to read a chapter.

Around 7am.  Jesse is up and getting ready for work and Mallory totally senses us and she is up too.  I make her breakfast.  Two waffles with honey and a side of juice.  I eat breakfast with her.

Jesse leaves for work and I grab my planner and start scheduling the week and listing my jobs.

Mallory colors a picture beside me. 

Max wakes up and I get him breakfast.  Two waffles with honey and a side of juice.  And it must be Schwans waffles.

8:00am I start to get ready for the day.  Then tell the kids they need to get ready as well.  All three kids share a room at the moment so Melanie is usually still sleeping… but they are loud in the morning and they wake her up while they are getting ready.  When she opens her eyes she sees this.

They wake me up the same way on Saturday and Sunday.  Except Melanie thinks it is great and kicks her feet and smiles big smiles back at them.  Me… I groan and roll over and tell them to go away.

I now have to get Melanie ready and keep reminding the big kids of what they are doing.  Putting their clothes on.  Brushing teeth.  Combing hair.  Making beds.  They get distracted super easy!  Super easy!

Melanie hangs out in the hallway in her highchair while I attempt to get ready for the third time!!  I am still walking around with half an outfit on and bedhead.

9:00am – we did it!  We are ready! 

I quick feed Melanie some baby cereal and my camera has died.  Really!  On the day I am to document my life my camera has a dead battery.  A true photography club member would of checked the battery the night before.  Thank goodness for cell phone cameras.

The kids are getting out some wiggles before school starts and are playing downstairs waiting for Melanie to be done eating.

9:15am Start School.

We typically start every school day off with calendar time.  Max finds the day (with assistance from myself or Mallory) and puts a Ninja Turtle sticker on the day.  Then we count the stickers.  Then he looks at all the pages until he finds his birthday and tells me it is a lot of days until his birthday.  He does that same routine every day.  As if it will magically be closer to his birthday.

Mallory’s calendar time is filled with tally marks, 100 chart, finding today, putting a sticker on it – this month it is kitty and puppy stickers, and charting the weather. 

Mondays we tackle awana homework.  Each week they have a story to listen to and a bible verse to memorize.  Max listens to his story.

Max is free to go play and entertain Melanie while Mallory and I work on her awanas homework.

10:00am – Melanie is hungry again and ready for her first nap.  Both kids have a few moments of free time until I come back.

10 minutes later I am back and we start working on counting and number recognition. 

This is actually part of Mallory’s curriculum but Max likes to do the dice games too.  So I help him while Mallory does her own.

(We may have did more stuff, but I can no longer remember and my notes don’t tell me)

10:50am – Set the kids up with an art project.

While they are contently working on their project.  I sneak off to do laundry and try to finish up my weekly schedule/plan.

11:10am – Melanie is awake.

11:30am – Attempt the laundry, bill paying, budgeting but Melanie is not having it.  She wants to be entertained by none other then myself.  So I leave it all… again.  I can hear the Christmas music blaring downstairs so Melanie and I take a stroll downstairs and see what the big kids are up to.

They are still working on their art project.

Make mental note… Max made a huge mess with this project and I now need to add vacuum the school room onto my weekly schedule. 

Malory’s finished project… a pig.

Max’s finished project… a turtle.

I then set Melanie up to watch the big kids have free time while I did more laundry and started lunch. 

12:00 – lunch time!!

Today for lunch I was visited by none other than Spiderman…

… and Princess Anna.

They constantly do this.  They come up when lunch is being prepared dressed as someone and act like them and say “Lynn what is for lunch today?”  And then they make me invite them to lunch and they hold character the entire time.  Most of the time I just sit and listen to them and don’t respond.  The conversation this day was Spiderman was asking Princess Anna if she happened to notice Spiderman at the coronation party?  Oh you didn’t see me there?  That is because I was up on the ceiling watching.

12:30 lunch is over and I send the kids off to play real quick.  Sometimes they get chores to do, but today was just play time.  I cleaned up the kitchen, vacuumed, more laundry, and attempted to entertain Melanie.  Which she was busted tugging on the plant!

I wish I got this excited about laundry.

Oh that Spiderman and Princess Anna find us anywhere.

Melanie and I usually play in the mirror after laundry.  She gets a kick out of herself.

1:00 – Story time.  The kids pick out a pile of books and I read them.  Usually their entire pile.  Melanie sits and plays toys.  Or grunts and hums the whole time.

1:20 – Big kids in their beds for quiet time.  Mondays I typically make them go in their beds because of the long weekends.  I tell them they don’t have to sleep – they just have to be quiet and no talking.

Melanie and I open the stack of mail that accumulated over the past week.  And at 1:30 I feed her and she is off for a nap.

Ahhh!  All three kids are tucked away in their beds and I so desperately want to crawl into my own bed.  Melanie is still waking up once (and sometimes twice) a night and this getting up early is kicking my butt.  I can’t though.  Too many things to do while it is quiet.  So I mix myself an energy drink.

I finish the mail.  Pay bills.  That all took a bit longer then I thought and the kids actually fell asleep so I wake up Mallory and we are off to finish her school.

2:30 – school is back in session.  She likes to start her afternoon off reading a book.  We snuggle on the couch downstairs and read a chapter while she wakes up.

Then we do her reading lesson.  Reading is not her favorite (numbers and math are) and so she always wants to get her reading lesson over with so we do that next.

Oh and guess who woke up!  Miss Melanie!  Just in time for Mallory to read her book to us.

Math lesson.  We gave Melanie some markers to keep her happy so she would stop humming at us.

3:45 – School is done!!  We come upstairs and Max is just waking up.

I toss a quick snack to the kids.  Finish the last bit of laundry for the day and start working on supper prep. 

Feed Melanie another bottle in the middle of supper prep.  After that she can happily sit and play with bubbles while I finish.

4:50 Jesse is home.

5:10 Supper hits the table.  We all eat as a family. We clean up the kitchen and I sneak away to my room to pump.

I am exhausted.  Jesse has to go to a city council meeting and my bible study is meeting at our house tonight.  I am just going to lay down on the floor and rest my eyes for 15 minutes until my bible study girls get here.

They showed up 15 minutes early!!  No rest!  Up we go!  Bible study is here until 8:30.

8:45 kids are in bed.  All kids are in bed.

I find my blanket and crawl back on the couch.  A few minutes later Jesse is home from city council.

I end my night the same way I start it… with a blanket and a book and my guy at my feet.  Jesse and I are on a reading kick lately.  So we both are reading at night.  It has been a really relaxing way to end the day.  I am reading Her Mother’s Hope by Francine Rivers.

Around 11pm it is lights out!

Doing this project was so eye opening to me.  It made me see why I can’t get anything completed.  It made me feel like it is okay to be exhausted at the end of the day.  And I didn’t even put in here how many times I had to stop and pump.  How many times I had to let the dog in and out.  How many times I had to stick my head out the patio door and tell the dog to stop barking at nothing.  How many times I changed a diaper.

Sometimes I feel like being a stay at home mom shouldn’t be hard.  It shouldn’t be exhausting.  The Moms that get up and go to work have it so much harder then this!  And I did that too!  It is hard!  It was exhausting!  This is a different kind of exhausting.  I can’t explain it.

I am also excited to see how our days change next year when I have a first grader, pre-schooler, and 1 year old.  I think I better buy stock in energy drinks.