A Day in the Life

Last year I did a day in the life and I thought it would be fun to do it again. Especially since my life has probably had the most drastic change that it will between these two years. (it's long, but it's for me for journaling)



5:54 am--Wake up to Adam kissing my cheek. We pray together, kiss, hug and he leaves for work.

6:03 am--Lucy wakes up. She has kicked her feet out of the bottom of her swaddle (our days of swaddling her are probably numbered). I wake up Jenna (who had been sleeping like a little Buddha with her feet folded in a cross-legged position) and bring them both to my bed to feed them (I nurse them both at the same time).

6:10 am--pick up "What to expect the first year" from my nightstand and read while I feed.

6:19 am--Jenna needs a break. I sit her up and burp her. Lucy gets distracted and now wants to smile instead of eat.

6:21 am--We're back in business (after a pep talk with Jenna about what a good eater she is. She responds to that and really does eat better).

6:40 am--They finish eating and this is my favorite part: we sit and smile at each other for several minutes. They tell me about their dreams. Lucy puts her hand in front of Jenna's face ("Hey, Mom, don't look at her, pay attention to ME!")

6:48 am--Change diapers (one sits on the chair or lays in the crib while I change the other then I switch them... I feel like they're close to rolling so I don't just leave either one on the changing table without watching anymore).

6:58 am--Swaddle them back up and put them down. Make my bed. Say my prayers. Turn up the heat (a bonus of sleeping in twos in our home is that we all stay pretty toasty so we keep the heat low at night). Put in my contacts. Put Adam's pajamas away (to be fair, he dresses in the dark as to not wake me and puts them on the bed cause he can't see, so putting them away is the least I can do).

7:13 am-- Make oatmeal, empty dishwasher. Pull out ground beef to thaw for dinner. Check on babies... sound asleep.

7:24 am-- Eat oatmeal while getting on the laptop. Check the news.  There's a story about a 19 year old mom in Chicago who gave her baby to foster care cause she had no job and no apartment. Sad. It would be really hard to give your baby away. Check my email. An email from Southwest Airlines distracts me and I start toying with trip ideas for this summer...

7:50 am-- Leslie texts. She's going to let me "shop" in her daughter Jaynie's closet for some cute clothes my girls can wear for their pictures in two weeks. She's so great.

7:54 am--Back to emails. Put "Chris Hock's farewell" on my calendar. Clean out my inbox. Download pictures. Read Kelly's review of "The Wednesday Letter" now that I just finished the book. Put emails in folders.. inbox was 199 now down to 68! (is it just me or are emails the bane of your existence too? No matter what I do I can't seem to keep up and it drives me crazy).

8:27 am--Put breakfast dishes away. Brush my teeth. Put whites in the washer. (sometimes this is where I lay back down until the next feeding.... but too much to do today).

8:59 am--Turn on ipod and work on paintings for Natalie Kofford's nursery. I love to paint. It does good to my soul.

9:31 am-- Put whites in the dryer. Put colors in the washer. Make a little yogurt and granola snack (my favorite).

9:42 am--Girls (who haven't made a peep since I layed them down) wake up right as I go in to wake them. Perfect. Unwrap their swaddles and find that both of them have pushed mostly out of their nightgowns--we've got shoulders hanging out and plunging necklines... the girls and I have a little chat about modesty.

9:49 am--Feed the girls and read scriptures. (Reading 1 Nephi 11--the interpretation of Lehi's dream. If the iron rod is the word of God [aka the scriptures] am I "holding on" as tightly as I should? I need to make my scriptures study more effective).

10:04 am--Jenna stops eating to smile. She's got such a beautiful smile. Meanwhile Lucy is practicing her sychronized swimming arm movements (and up! and big circle!). Jenna's arm while she eats is more like the funky chicken.

10:28 am--Change diapers. Get them dressed. I love the one on one face time I get while I'm changing them. They LOVE getting changed and always think we're tickling them for some reason (okay, we often use changing time as tickle time too...)

Lucy

Jenna

Lucy

Jenna

10:44 am--I change into workout clothes. Put them on the floor in the living room on blankets for some tummy time while I get on the stationary bike. Lucy is lifting her head up farther than I've ever seen!!

10:55 am--Tummy time has turned to tears. Time for bouncers. But we talked it out--what went well, what didn't. What we'll do next time. I think they're setting some positive goals for themselves. As they sit (happily) in bouncers I continue to bike and Jenna is mesmerized by my black and white stripe on my pants going round and round.

11:21 am--They start telling me they're tired. Jenna's got this face that looks like she's going to cry but no sound actually comes out and then in melts into the saddest pout you've ever seen. Heartbreaker that one. Lucy doesn't so much cry anymore, it's more like she chews us out. She'll let out a tirade of LOUD jabber and make sure we KNOW how she feels ("is anyone LISTENING to me??!!")

11:27 am--Okay, okay. Off the bike. To the crib. Again, I love the one on one smile time I have as I swaddle them up. We love each other so much. Tired girls fall right to sleep. Put clothes in the dryer on the way back.

11:41 am--Put in my pilates DVD and roll out my mat. Our TV is broken so we're using this little TV. Actually it's more like our DVD player is broken so we can play DVD's through the playstation which can only plug in to the little TV but if we want to watch TV we can only do it through the big TV... yeah, we're going to have to fix this problem soon...

12:04 pm--Make lunch (a baked potato). While it's cooking I make phone calls to set up my visiting teaching. Got dressed. Put on deoderant and a touch of makeup.

12:33 pm--Lucy fusses. Pacifier was spit out. Back in. Back to sleep.

12:40 pm-- Finally sit down to lunch. Blog while I eat (still trying to catch up from last month).

1:10 pm-- Go in to wake up the girls. Heard a sound on the way. Girls are already awake. They always look frightened when they first wake up. Which makes me laugh. And then seeing me laugh makes them smile. But their mouths are covered, so all I can see are four little smiley eyes peeking out of their swaddles and that makes me laugh even more.

1:13 pm-- Feed. Lucy wanted to do nothing but eat. Jenna wanted to do anything but eat. I eat a square of a chocolate bar which distracts the girls. 

2:07 pm--Done feeding, off to changing.

2:19 pm-- Read books to the girls. I have "checked out" a stack from my mom's "library" and am loving reading some of my childhood favorites to my kids.

2:30 pm-- The girls sit on boppy pillows on my bed while I fold laundry. We sing songs. Jenna sings along. Lucy eats her fists.

2:47 pm--Jenna was ready for a nap. For us, it's a combo of them telling me when they're hungry/tired but me making sure it's close to our schedule (Babywise works for us). So it's not that we follow the schedule to the minute, but we know times that things should be happening and we stay close to that. We have found that when we stray from the routine they have really hard days. Which means I have a really hard day (cranky babies). Which means Adam has a really hard day (cranky wife). And now, here are the steps to the swaddle (which I believe is one factor in helping my girls sleep so well thus far... I'm worried for the day when they'll be too big to swaddle... they're already starting to kick out a bit. But I'm going to keep letting it work its magic as long as I can):

Start with the blanket in a diamond shape with the top corner folded down.

Lay baby with head on fold (fold should hit above the ears) just slightly left of center.

With your right hand hold the pacifier in the mouth. With your left hand grab the left corner of the blanket and pull it tightly over baby's body.

Rather than pull it straight across the face, angle it in a downward line so it makes a V across the face but holds the pacifier in. Tuck leftover blanket under baby's body.

Bring bottom part of blanket up and tuck it tightly under baby's body on the right side as well.

This is probably what can make or break your swaddle. Grab the right side (rest of) blanket and pull it TIGHTLY across the baby, again trying to make the top part angle across the face.

Bring rest of blanket under baby's body and out the other side.

Take remaining bit and tuck it into the fold in front.

The real trick is making it tight enough that the pacifier stays in and they can't push their way out. Sleeps like a charm.

2:56 pm--Babies are asleep (with one eye open... anybody else's babies sleep this way?).

3:05 pm--Text with Adam who's done teaching for the day. Finish folding laundry & put away.

3:13 pm--Called on two different insurance bills. Why is it never straightforward? We've been so blessed to be double insured while both of us were working (which happily coincided with my double pregnancy and double birth... of all the times in life for this to happen, what a blessing) but man it has caused confusion on ALL of our bills. It is never right the first time around and has been a headache to try to straighten out.

3:24 pm-- Put on ipod again and work on Natalie's paintings again... go to my happy place. (don't you love when your ipod shuffles to songs you never think about but love?)

I fell in love with this song when I fell in love with this video. Makes me want to be artistic and creative and live an inspired life. Which, as we know, is my favorite thing in the world.

3:30 pm-- My favorite sound of the day: garage up. Adam's home. He gets the mail as he always does cause he loves to for some reason. He gives me a kiss. We exchange highlights of our days (I tell him about Lucy getting up on her elbows).

3:38 pm-- Get a call back from my visiting teachee. Call my companion.

3:49 pm--Leave for Costco.

3:59 pm-- Get to Costco. In. 3 items in the cart. Checkout.

4:11 pm--Out.

4:17 pm--Sing along with "Semi-Charmed Life" on the radio. Chuckle as three roly-poly kids in backpacks try to run across the street when there's a gap in traffic.

4:20 pm-- Bread store. Two loaves of Grandma Sycamore. $1.55. Every time.

4:31 pm--Back home. Put away groceries. Cut myself a delicious snack.

4:44 pm-- Wake up girls to feed. Adam and I talk while I feed. He asks if I went to the Murray Costco. I said the West Valley one. Jenna bursts into tears. Jenna hates West Valley.

4:58 pm--Adam starts dinner. We're having Mexi Shells tonight. From the kitchen I hear, "It tasts like burning!" and laugh (he's cutting onions). Can't shout to the next room, girls get too distracted.

5:23 pm--Check emails. Check blogs. Get distracted with a blog questionairre for a USU girls' thesis.

5:41 pm--After wrestling with Lucy for a couple minutes I finally told her she could be done eating. We smiled at each other and Lucy started telling me all her thoughts.


5:49 pm--Lucy shows Dad her new trick. Family play time. Adam and I discuss concerns we have about the girls. It's tough to be parents sometimes (they always give you something to worry about, don't they?). But it's wonderful to be parents TOGETHER. There's no one else I'd rather be down in this hole with.

6:12 pm-- Timer beeps. Dinners done. We set table and get everything ready.

6:37 pm--Sit down to dinner and some chocolate milk (our most recent indulgence).  We play a little Skip-Bo while we eat. So nice to relax and play together and talk and unwind.

6:50 pm-- Put girls down for naps.

7:11 pm-- Bird flies into window. Awesome.

7:26 pm--Adam and I converse about chocolate and how many sweets we've eaten since the sugar challenge ended. Resolve to be healtheir.

7:50 pm--put away dinner dishes.

8:04 pm--Girls fuss, I feed.

8:36 pm-- Adam feeds Jenna a bottle of pumped milk with a scoop of formula to give it extra calories (we're trying to help Jenna gain more weight).


8:40 pm-- text my little sister Julie about a fun article I read that she will like. Julie's always so full of love.
 
8:52 pm--Change Lucy's diaper, put her in pajamas while Adam finishes feeding Jenna.
 

9:02 pm-- Family prayer. Family Scripture Study. We're reading the Book of Mormon and marking what we can learn about parenthood in it. Adam and I each bought blue Book of Mormons so we can mark them up just for this and made a code (orange--parenting philosophies, yellow--ways we can be examples, brown--things we want to teach our children, green--verbal counsel, blue--ongoing traditions/habits, red--ways parents can show love, purple--God's promised blessings to righteous families, lt blue--family goals, lt green--parental responsibilities). Any time I'm reading the scriptures with a purpose in mind or studying for a specific project it just makes them come alive for me more. It's been almost a year now and we're only halfway through Alma but it's because we've had some great discussions and sometimes only get through a few verses because we'll cross reference or be marking principles.  It'll be fun to read these copies again years later with all our notes and ideas (as such young/inexperienced parents).
 
9:24 pm-- Put the girls to bed. Adam starts getting ready for bed. I make his lunch for tomorrow (not every day, but some nights when it gets late and I want him to bed earlier so he can get more sleep).
 
 

9:31 pm--Set delay timer on dishwasher. Make sure garage is shut. Make sure doors are locked. Put away clutter (clean house= happy mom). Turn off lights. Turn down heat. Check on sleeping girls, turn on their nightlight. Kiss Adam as he hops in bed. Brush teeth. Take out contacts. Say prayers.

9:50 pm--Read in bed for a little bit.

10:03 pm--Lights out.