Day in the Life – October 2018 (Ages 5 & 2.5)

I’ve been wanting to do a “Day in the Life” post, and I had decided a while back that I wanted to wait until we got into a school routine so that I could document what a typical (pre-)school day looks like. I did two “Day in the Life” posts toward the end of last summer – one that showed what a typical stay-at-home day was like, and one where we had a little morning outing. Our routine on our off days still look pretty similar to how they did last year when I made those posts. The girls’ interests are of course a little different now, but routine is similar.

We didn’t have anything special scheduled for last Friday, so what you’re reading today is a pretty typical school day for us. I usually set my alarm to go off at 5:30 during the week. Sometimes I’m extra tired and decide I want to sleep in, but on a typical week day, I’m out of the bed around 5:45. I usually use this time to share whatever post is going live that day, work on a new post, do my Bible reading (if I feel awake enough), or just drink coffee and watch TV.

I started doing this about a year ago after some encouragement from my friend Erica. If you know me, you know that I sometimes get into these kicks, where I’m all gung-ho about something, stick with it for about a month, and then drop it like a hot potato and don’t think about it again. So if I’ve been doing something for an entire year, you know it’s something that I either really enjoy, or has improved some aspect of my life.

You may ask, how does getting up at 5:45 improve your life? For me, getting up significantly earlier than my kids drastically changes my attitude in the morning, and it surprisingly gives me more energy. I have the opportunity to sit in a quiet house or outside as the sun is coming up, and wake up peacefully. By the time the kids are awake, I’ve usually been somewhat productive and I’m more alert and in a better mood to handle all of their morning demands.

I enjoy sitting outside as the sun is coming up, but I can only stand to do this when the temps are cooler. Last Friday was the first truly cool morning that I had a chance to do this since the Spring. It was 48 degrees outside, so I put on my pajama pants and a sweatshirt, grabbed a warm blanket, and sat outside with my coffee and my bible and just enjoyed the crisp air. I love listening to the birds chirp and the roosters crow and watching the sun rise through the trees in the distance. I hope to make this a more regular occurrence this fall.

The girls actually slept until almost 8:00, which is later than usual for them. I had made myself a smoothie for breakfast, so I decided to make one for them too. They were excited about this, because this isn’t something they get to have every morning. I like to keep pre-made freezer bags of fruit for smoothies so that I can easily pull one out and make one when I feel like it.

I got the girls ready for school, packed up lunches, and out the door we went. I love ! My mom found them and got them for all the granddaughters. I noticed on Shannon’s Insta stories that Payton and Addy wore the same dresses that day. So funny!

I dropped them off in car line that morning, then headed off to get some work done. But first I stopped at Michael’s to grab some cute little sticky notes that I had spotted for my mini Happy Notes book. I’m in the process of making a Disney notebook with our itinerary and all kinds of info we might need for our trip, and I thought these sticky note sheets would be perfect to easily find what I’m looking for.

 

When the girls are at school I try to be productive and either get blogging work done, work out, do my Bible reading, or clean the house. I will either go home, sit at a local coffee house, the library, or somewhere else quiet where I can easily concentrate. On this day I decided to head to Grounded Coffee and work on a new blog post. I ordered a cup of black coffee and got to work. I was there for close to two hours, so I knocked out some pretty good work, before heading to grab some lunch.

 

I decided on Chicken Salad Chick for lunch (my favorite!) I grabbed a table there and got to work on jotting down my Disney notes with my new sticky note sheets until it was time to pick up the girls from school. I got these cute photos while they were at school from one of their teachers.

 

I picked them up through the car line and we headed straight home. When we got home, they laid down to take naps/have rest time. I’m usually ok with Raley sitting in her bed and “resting” for a couple hours, as long as she’s playing quietly and is not getting up and down too much. I mean, she’s 5. I can’t expect her to take a nap every day. But I do expect her to have quiet time and rest.

Now Audrey, who is typically my good little sleeper and falls right to sleep at nap time, has started to fight it a bit more. Sometimes it takes her over an hour to fall asleep and sometimes she doesn’t fall asleep at all. On this day, she took about an hour and a half to fall asleep! But then she slept for over 3 hours. By the time she finally woke up, it was dark outside, and it was time to eat then go right back to bed. I wish they would understand that if they would go to sleep right away, they wouldn’t lose their evening play time. Raley had this issue too when she was younger.

After Raley’s rest time was over, we had some nice snuggle time and play time while dinner was cooking. David got home around 6, so he got some snuggle time in with Raley before dinner was ready too. She was cracking me up playing with this old iPhone. She was talking into it saying “play Disney music period.” I guess she hears me voice texting sometimes, which is wear she picked up on the “period.” It was pretty hilarious.

 

I had planned on making chicken enchilada soup in the crock pot, but realized a little too late that I forgot to put it on. Luckily this is a meal that can be made on the stove top as well.

 

We ate dinner, and the girls took forever to eat (as per usual), so we had just enough time for a bath before bed time. Do your kids take a long time to eat? It can get so frustrating. We’re like just put the food in your mouth and eat! And this is a meal that they both say they really like, but they still just take forever to eat. I hope this is something they’ll grow out of soon, but Raley is 5 and it’s still an issue.

We usually split up to do bedtime – one of us takes one girl and one of us takes the other. Tonight I put Audrey to bed. She likes to lay out her books on the floor and do “eeny meeny miney moe” to pick which one we’re going to read. They both love these Disney books with the eReader. We have a and a that we have received as gifts. They are both able to match the shapes to the button they are supposed to press and know the sound for when it’s time to turn the page, so they can use these when they’re playing independently as well.

 

Once we got the girls to bed, David and I stayed up for a bit to watch some of our shows. Now that the fall shows have started back we’ve got a DVR full of new episodes to watch. We started watching two new shows that looked interesting to us – Manifest and A Million Little Things. We are enjoying both of them so far! And of course, we’re hooked on American Horror Story: Apocalypse. What are you watching this season?

So that’s it for our day. Nothing terribly exciting, but very typical. On most days, Audrey doesn’t sleep until 6:30 in the evening and gets to have some play time before bed, but it is what it is.

I’d like to know – what does your typical day look like? Do your kids take a long time to eat at meal time? What shows are you enjoying this season?

 

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:
An “At-Home” Day in the Life – August 2017
A “Fun Morning Out” Day in the Life – August 2017