6:00 (some mornings) – hit snooze a couple times, grab a sweater and slippers, and head to the bathroom for my morning routine of Listerine, glass of water with birth control (mommy’s must-have morning vitamin I tell the kids) and head to the kitchen to start the coffee-maker. Sit down by the Christmas tree, turn classical music on my phone, curl up in my Christmasy-plaid blanket, light a candle and open my laptop. Spend the next hour going through emails, responding based on priority and what my low-caffeinated mind can process.
(Alternate beginning: 7’ish – sleep until one of the kids crawls into my bed and claims my space and attention)
7:30 – get all the kids their food and vitamins and put together their outfits, if we haven’t done so the night before. Usually this involves having kids grab pants from their closet upstairs, while I’m down in the basement searching through a pile of clean laundry, looking for the one and only shirt they’ll possibly wear. Realize that one shirt, the ONLY one that will do for today, is in fact still in the dirty clothes pile and go with Plan B.
(Does anyone else’s family exist in a constant state of three forms of laundry? The dirty pile, the clean pile, the folded but not put away pile. If it actually makes it to the dresser or gets hung up, it goes there to die and never be seen again, because our family doesn’t function outside of the 3 aforementioned piles. I kid…but for the love of laundry, make it stop)
7:55 – Amazon Alexa reminds me to start a pile of laundry for the day. Cute. I make lunches and check Instagram instead.
8:00 – Amazon Alexa reminds the kids to get dressed. Yep, real cute. Kids open their daily advent calendars instead.
8:05 – Amazon Alexa reminds the kids to brush their teeth, make their beds, and turn off their lights upstairs. At this point Alexa is just mocking me.
8:25ish – Hug kids at the door and wave them off to our neighbor’s house. She and I share carpool, and we just switched morning/afternoon responsibilities so I no longer have to take the kids to school (hallelujah!)
8:40 (some mornings) – Take youngest to preschool for the morning, which transitions to lunch and then Children’s Day Out in the afternoon.
9:00 – When Mia doesn’t go to school, Tuesdays are a free day to see where the wind leads us – maybe the library for reading time, maybe go to the gym so mommy can work/workout, maybe just lay low at home and have all-day jammies days and catch up on housework. Thursdays we go to Urban Fort, an open play area with a café and Wi-Fi.
9:30-2:00 – Today we’re at Urban Fort and I’m set up with my lavender latte. When I’m not volunteering as a contributor for STLMB, I’m the Business Director for STLMB’s parent company, City Moms Blog Network. I essentially do all the contracts for our sister sites as well as contracts for all sales clients and all the accounting for the company. What started as a 10-hour administrative job six years ago has turned into a director role with much more responsibility and sites to administer. This week we’re celebrating our latest contract just signed by a little company called Facebook (!!) who will be a lead sponsor for our upcoming Sister Site Conference this January in Colorado Springs.
( I glance through the wine and beer menu. Yes, you read that right…they serve wine and beer at Urban Fort. One of these times I’m going to go for it)
2:00 – If my husband is in town, I’ll text him to see what sounds good for dinner. Place an order with Shipt from the local grocery store and add a couple other necessary items to meet the $35 minimum no delivery fee. (If I have the groceries I need at home already, but need something like pull-ups, like I did today, I place an order for Target Drive-Up, best invention ever and proof that God loves us mamas and wants us to be happy.)
3:15 – Stop by Target Drive-Up and grab pull-ups from one of their red-shirted saints while Mia sleeps in the backseat.
3:25 – Pull into the carpool line at school. Use the next few minutes to post about my amazing experience at Urban Fort (J), keep conversations moving for work, and sign-up to bring paper plates for the school party.
3:40 – Kids are all in the car, Mia is still asleep, we drive home and drop off our neighbor. Come up with something to congratulate the kids on and declare it an ice cream afternoon.
4:15 – Get home with full ice cream bellies and go through kids’ backpacks, my favorite part of the day. I love seeing what they’re doing in class and it sparks conversation throughout the evening.
4:30-5:30 – Combination of working, breaking up arguments, listening to stories about school and funny things said throughout the day and hearing new songs they’ve learned. If it’s warm enough, the kids go outside to play with neighbors until it’s dark. Lately due to the weather we’ve been watching Christmas movies and playing video games.
5:30-6:30 – Some nights I know exactly what we’ll have for dinner and this time is spent putting it all together and sitting together and eating. Some nights it’s chicken nuggets and mac & cheese and I eat leftovers, standing in the kitchen.
6:30-7:30 – Baths. In the winter baths and showers are determined by who had an activity and how much sweat that produced. All others get cut from the bath rotation until the following night. While baths are happening, other kids are helping wrap Christmas gifts or snuggling together to read or watch iPads or put on dance shows. We have lots of dance shows in our house.
7:30-9:30 – Mentally prepare myself for the next two-ish hours of bedtime and cuddling and back-rubbing and reading and story-telling and moderating and overseeing and more cuddling. Three kids who love one-on-one time with their mommy and daddy equals a later bedtime than what they should. I remind myself these days are short.
9:00 – Switch out laundry one last time, make sure kitchen is clean, set the dishwasher to run, and set the coffee for the next morning, should it be a “sleep-in” kind of morning. Every night I end with a cup of tea and a bowl of cereal – a habit I’ve had since I was a kid!
11:00-12:00’ish – Crawl into bed and check the Alexa app to make sure all doors are locked, lights are off, nightlights are on, soft music is playing in kids’ rooms, and set our Alexa to play soft rain for white noise. One last final prayer and words of thankfulness to God for the day, no matter how good or bad, and fall asleep knowing it’s all out of my hands and tomorrow is a new day. And regardless of how the next day starts, there will for sure be cuddles. And there will for sure be coffee.
