Sample Day with Two Kids

Life is a roller coaster, right? The high highs, the low lows. Children punctuate those highs and lows, lending a deeper height and depth. Whole Parenting is all about familyhood, developing the whole person of your child, and living the challenges and joys of parenthood. So how do I achieve this? Some days it’s just about survival. I’ve swapped lawyering for home life, etsy, & blogging. Here’s a little sample day in our lives.

6am: AA up & out the door. Nursing SweetPea in our bed.

Morning: SuperBoy up and at ’em. Attempt to nurse SweetPea back down in bed, and hoping she doesn’t awaken just yet.

Try to convince him to sleep more. Try to convince him to go potty on the toilet. Change out of PJs. Try to convince him to come downstairs. Probably snuggle in bed with him for another half hour, reading books, saying morning prayers, and counting all his buddies.

Make him oatmeal, yogurt, & fruit dish {Toddler Breakfast Delight}. Convince him to eat while sitting in his chair. Listen periodically for SweetPea on the monitor, and checking her actual little face. Start laundry. Read books. Listen to music. Have a dance party.

SweetPea awakens at some point. Nurse her, change her, put her in her chair so she can watch her brother and maybe have a little banana & rice cereal. Clean up after everyone. Try to eat breakfast myself.

SuperBoy goes for quiet time on his bed reading while SweetPea is nursed & rocked down for a nap. After she goes down, play with him. Read, draw, dance, talk, launder, start prepping lunch.

Lunch: Lunch for him, she wakes up, help him eat, convince him his food is delicious, nurse her, offer her something to eat too. Laundry! Naptime for him while she plays in her crib, shrieking, protesting that she wants to be part of this. He insists on singing Tantum Ergo, then having me check on Sweets, and then returning to sing the second verse of the old time Latin hymn.

I eat, clean up his lunch, respond to emails, clean up the house, laundry!, sew a little, blog a little, run errands with her if my mom is around to watch him while he sleeps. She plays in the sling, rolls on the floor, and attempts to eat all her toys.

I start dinner.

Afternoon: He wakes up, we play, clean, probably have a tantrum or two. Playdate, visit with friends, go outside, go to the library, walk up to the construction site nearby and watch the diggers in motion. She goes down for another nap whilst he reads or plays in his room–next to hers so I can keep an eye on him. Inevitably just before she’s about to fall asleep he allegedly has to go to the bathroom and insists on me helping him. We start her nap routine all over again.

We finish off dinner prep, clean up after all our play (maybe even actually clean, clean the house), and finish up laundry.

Evening: AA comes home around 6:30pm, he eats while playing with SuperBoy and holding SweetPea. I eat, hands free, child free, and it’s amazing. We clean up dinner, those three play while I hand-wash dishes and prep AA’s lunch for the next day. Then it’s bathtime, bedtime, and sometimes melt-down time.

By 8:30pm, AA and I collapse, children sleeping, and stare at each other, talking about all the cute things (and terrible things) our kids did that day and how work was for him. We may geek out and discuss legal stuff a ton. I sew or write, he reads or passes out early. All in time for SweetPea’s 11pm, 2am, 4am awakenings. And then it all begins again.

There’s lots of running interference to head those tantrums off at the pass, ensuring he gets to the toilet when he needs to, ensuring she gets nursed when she needs to, they both sleep, eat, and play happily, and the house doesn’t burn down. If I get a little me time, that’s great. But unlikely. Me time is them time. Me time is us time.

I wouldn’t have it any other way, and I love watching them love each other. And I love parenting. If I think this is hectic, whoa! I suppose I’d better wait until they’re both walking and talking.