Morning
I slept terribly on Sunday night and was completely exhausted by the end of the day on Monday. I crashed hard Monday night and let myself sleep in until 6:15 a.m. yesterday morning. Catching up on much-needed sleep trumped everything else and I awoke feeling much more like myself. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much sleep impacts our overall day until you find yourself walking around like a zombie with limited patience and no motivation to accomplish much of anything.
Since I slept in a bit, I didn’t have too much time to work in the morning and only managed to knock out a few emails and pack the boys’ lunches before everyone was up for the day. Once we were all rockin’, we piled into my car and took Chase to school before Ryder, Rhett and I made our way to a local park to hang out for an hour or so before Ryder’s preschool drop off.
We’re living that awkward school drop off life right now where I have some strange blocks of time to fill in the day every day between Chase and Ryder’s school drop offs/pick ups since they’re spaced out a little funky. Every morning, we have a full hour to kill between Chase and Ryder’s drop offs and 1.5 hours between the two pick-ups. It’s a little weird but we’re juggling it decently right now!
(Since I know someone will ask, Ryan’s work day begins before Chase’s drop off but if he has a later start for whatever reason, he handles Chase’s drop off. And the bus pick-up for Chase’s school is 10 minutes away at an even earlier time and his school is 12 minutes away so that option doesn’t logistically make sense for us.)
In the morning we typically fill our hour with park playtime or we will occasionally run a quick errand like returning books to the library (the outdoor slot since the library doesn’t open until 9 a.m.), filling the car with gas, running to the post office, etc. The beautiful weather makes going to a park our favorite activity at the moment and Ryder loves picking which park we’ll visit every day. Now that Rhett is walking, it makes park playtime all the more fun because he loves following his big brother everywhere and throwing Monster Trucks down the slides for Ryder to “rescue.”
Eventually, we made our way to Ryder’s preschool and said goodbye to him for the morning before Rhett and I drove back home for some more playtime before Rhett’s nap. Rhett is definitely on the cusp of transitioning to one nap because more often than not his morning nap is his only good nap of the day. This works well for me right now since it opens up some work time for me when the big kids are at school but once he drops his morning nap, I’m not sure what I’ll do on the work front. Once again I find myself remembering a go-to motherhood mantra I’ve said to myself a million times over the past six years — “We’ll figure it out.” Sometimes things can seem so overwhelming or stressful but somehow, someway, we figure it out.
While Rhett slept, I went into go-mode and worked on the computer after I made myself breakfast 2.0 which looked like a bowl of my high protein oat bran. (Breakfast 1.0 was a muffin and a latte on the way out the door.)
I worked for a little more than an hour before heading outside to complete a Burn Boot Camp workout in the driveway. Rhett decided to crash my workout party about 25 minutes in so I had an unexpected workout buddy join in the fun!
Thankfully Rhett was quite content to crawl around and explore the toys and snacks I laid out for him on the driveway while I wrapped up the last 15 minutes of my workout.
I usually don’t even attempt to work out when Rhett is awake because he’s into everything (and sometimes just plain needy) whereas working out when the big kids are awake is typically not an issue at all since they’re easily entertained outside while I workout in the driveway. I just wanted to share this here in case there are any moms out there with a baby on their hands who may be hoping to be able to work out while their little one is awake but that isn’t a reality yet. I’m just here to say that in my experience squeezing in a workout when the kids are awake became a lot easier when the kids got a little older. There is hope!
Afternoon
Once I was done with my workout, I took a quick shower while Rhett explored the bathroom and then the two of us headed out to pick Ryder up from preschool.
A smoothie served as lunch on the go for me. In my cup: Frozen banana, peanut butter, spinach, chocolate protein powder, almond milk and hemp seeds.
We headed straight from preschool to a friend’s house for soccer! My friend Jamie is hosting a small group of kids in her backyard for the fall season of Soccer Shots and Ryder LOVES it.
Right now Ryder’s post-preschool soccer is the only activity we have on the agenda for any of our kids other than school and that was rather intentional on my part. I wanted to keep our schedule mostly clear this fall because I knew all of the boys would be adjusting to new schedules (especially Chase with much longer days) and I also knew we’d be navigating a few different nap schedules. I’m sure we’ll add more activities in eventually but right now I think we’ve all been happy with a somewhat lighter schedule as we eased into the school year.
After soccer, we made our way to Chase’s school to pick him up before heading home. I did some dishes and laundry while the boys played and then did my best to settle Rhett down for an afternoon nap. He fought it hard for about 10 minutes but eventually fell asleep which was a pleasant surprise since he’s been resisting his afternoon nap a lot lately. While Rhett napped, Chase and Ryder played in the backyard and I got a little more work done on my computer as I watched them from the patio.
Evening
Once Rhett was up, it was dinnertime. I dug into a grain bowl made with a bunch of leftovers.
In the mix: Brown rice, quinoa, pinto beans, shredded slow cooker cilantro lime salsa chicken, shredded cheese, green beans, corn, tomatoes and cilantro. A little bit of everything!
We spent the rest of the night just hanging out as a family and Ryan and I did our best to catch up while the kids played for a bit before bath time, stories and bed time.
Once everyone was settled, we crawled into bed ourselves and I spent another 30 minutes or so working from my laptop before reading and falling asleep. I just started The Maidens by Alex Michaelides (the same author who wrote The Silent Patient) and I have high hopes for this one!
As for today, I’m off to my first parent/teacher conference of the year for Chase before school this morning and am excited to connect with his teacher a bit more. Chase is loving kindergarten but I always think it’s so interesting to chat with teachers and hear their perspective about how things are going.
I hope you all have a good Wednesday and I’ll see ya back here on Friday!
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