12:00 am - This is when I went to bed the night before. Ammon and I stayed up really late talking and then Bekah woke up and didn't want to sleep. Around midnight, I finally got to bed.
2:13 am - Bekah wakes up for the first time. I pop her binky back into her mouth and she falls asleep. Unfortunately, it has only been two hours since I went to bed. Not a good sign.
3:27 am - Bekah fusses again. She is teething and waking up a lot at night. It is not very fun for me.
4:15 am - I growl under my breath when I hear Bekah crying. Why can't she just sleep?
5:00 am - Joe gets up for work. I wake up enough to feed Bekah. She goes back to sleep for a couple of hours without stirring. Hooray!
6:50 am - My alarm goes off. It's time to get the kids up and ready for school. I drag my very tired rear end out of bed. Of course, now Bekah is dead to the world. I hate hauling all the little ones (Emma, Caleb, and Bekah) out of bed to drive their siblings to school.
7:10 am - Still trying to get Hannah and Lizzie out of bed. Yesterday I was really struggling to get Hannah up. She begged for a few more minutes. I was super tired (I had an even worse night with the baby the previous night), so I agreed. I laid down on my bed to rest for a couple of minutes. When my eyes opened again, it was 9:00!!!!! We all jumped out of bed, and I took three kids to school nearly two hours late *blush*. Don't think I'm about to win any parenting of the year awards!
7:30 am - I help the girls do their hair, get dressed, and make their breakfast. Ammon is wonderful and gets himself ready and pours his own cereal.
Breakfast is most finished and we're ready to go!
7:40 am -We are supposed to have finished breakfast, brushed our teeth, and have jackets/backpacks/lunches ready to go by now. We meet in the living room for family prayer. I just can't get myself to wake the kids up at 5:00 am to have it with Joe, so the kids and I do it without him on the mornings he's at work.
Morning family prayer
7:45 am - I drop the girls off at their school, and then I drop Ammon off at his. They are all now sufficiently awake and cheerful.
Hannah (8) and Lizzie (6) leave for school
Ammon (10) is ready to tackle another day
8:05 am - Home again! Time for me to shower and eat breakfast
8:30 am - Diaper time. I change Bekah and Caleb's diapers. Caleb is poopy. Joy. I dress Bekah and Caleb and supervise Emma as she gets dressed. Caleb doesn't want to get dressed (or have his diaper changed), so I chase him all over and wrestle him down to the ground. Out of protest, he decided to stick his hand into his poop. Yuck. He must get that from his Dad's side of the family. :)
Caleb (2) tries to escape the inevitable
I caught him!
I don't want to bother with Emma's hair. She has a terribly tender head, and I just don't want to deal with it right now. I guess if we're going out in public than later I'll brush it (another Mom of the Year award, right?)
8:50 am - Caleb eats breakfast (he was sleeping when the other kids ate theirs) while I clean up the breakfast mess. I straighten up the living room and open all the blinds.
9:15 am -I sit down to work on a cookbook I am helping make for a family gathering. My goal is to have it put together finished by Friday so that my mom and sister Emily have enough time to get the printer on it. Unfortunately, Emma and Caleb have taken advantage of my distraction and created havoc while I work. Yesterday they got into our food storage room and ate half of a package of cookies. Then they got into the pantry and ripped all our paper plates up into tiny pieces. Finally, they found some hemorrhoid cream in the bathroom and smeared it all over the counters and mirrors. Sigh.
Cookbook disaster
9:23 am -I have barely even started when Bekah needs to eat again. I leave my work and settle down to feed her. She is a stinker and will only eat 3 ounces, even though I prepared 6. She doesn't like to eat much when she's teething.
9:35 am -Back to trying to work on my cookbook. I get some work done, although there were many breaks for mediating fights between Emma and Caleb, instituting time-outs, printing off coloring pictures, getting snacks, wiping bums (yes, Emma still needs help wiping after she goes potty), kissing owies and so on.
Bekah (5.5 months) plays while I work
10:30 am - I realized when I changed him, that I am out of diapers for Caleb. I would really prefer to go to the store BEFORE Lizzie comes home, so that I can just have three kids instead of four. :) Joe calls and says that he will pick Lizzie up from kindy and come home for lunch, so I head off to Walmart. Oops. I never brushed Emma's hair. I rummage around the car for a hair thing and put it into a ponytail before we head in. I buy a new memory card for my camera, because it isn't working. Unfortunately, the new card is too big for my camera, but Joe fixes my original problem. I'm not sure why I just didn't wait for him before I wasted money on the new one. Oh, well.
12:00 pm - We get home to Joe and Lizzie. I feed Bekah another bottle and change her poopy diaper.
Joe likes lots of sour cream on his burritos
12:15 pm -Lunch time. I tell the kids I'm making Mac Cheese for lunch. None of them are excited. I have no idea why. I thought they would be thrilled. Caleb refuses to eat. Oh, well. He will just go hungry. I make lunch for Joe and I as well and we get a nice visit about work and stuff.
12:30 pm - I clean up lunch and Joe changes Caleb's now poopy diaper (good thing we went to the store!).
Joe changes Caleb (2)...please don't hate me because this picture is so gross!
12:40 pm - I work on getting Bekah to sleep. She is fussing at me. I change her diaper and get her ready for sleep. Her favorite place to sleep is our bathroom. Random, I know. Maybe it's actually quiet back there. There is one of those ceiling heater things and she likes to hear the sound of it and snuggle into her bouncy seat.
Why won't she do this at night???
1:00 pm - I make some phone calls to set up visiting teaching for next week (yes it WILL be the last week of the month...eek!)
1:15 pm - Back to the cookbook. Caleb goes down for a nap after a diaper change. Emma also zonked out on her own on the couch. Lame, lame, lame. That means she will be up until way late and that Joe and I will need to have her sleep in our room or she will keep her sisters awake (and they need their sleep for school). It is nice and quiet, though, as three of my kids are sleeping.
My BABY!!! Caleb (2) get ready for his nap...yes, he still sleeps in a crib...anything to keep him contained!
Sweet Emma Suzanne (4)
2:00 pm - Time to pick Ammon up from school. Every time we go somewhere in the car, it involves strapping FOUR kids into carseats...no easy feat. I can hardly wait until all my kids can put on their own coats and buckle themselves into the car.
Ammon(10) is home from school!
2:15 pm - Chat with Ammon at home for a bit. He is trying to bargain his way back into his electronic privileges that he lost a few days ago. The kids get one hour per day, but he lost his for some indiscretion on Monday. He pleads that he will clean the whole house. Hmmm...tempting.
2:45 pm - Time to go pick up Hannah from school. I can hardly WAIT until next year! I will only have one pick up for all the kids. Ammon has decided to attend the girl's school next year and Lizzie will be in 1st grade and there all day (and Emma won't be in kindy yet). That means that Joe will drop them off at school on his way to work (he is currently doing a training program for a few weeks where he is working "shifts" from 6:30-6:30 three or four days a week...he will be back to 8-5 soon), and I will only have to go pick them up! Hooray!
What a cutie! Hannah (8)
3:15 pm - After we get home, I supervise homework time. This means that I tell them it's time to do the homework, and I answer any questions they have. While they do homework, I feed Bekah again.
Here I am feeding Bekars...for some reason, when I look at this picture, it seems like I'm about 15 years old or something
3:45 pm - We pack up the kids for swimming lessons. I realize that Bekah has a poopy diaper just as we are leaving. We rush back inside to change her. Now we're running late...again.
4:10 pm - Swimming lessons start. This is usually one of my more calm times of the day. I just sit there and watch them. Quite soothing.
If you look closely, those white spots are snow...it was chilly
See those cute blue crocs Emma (4) is wearing? They are Caleb's. She really wanted new shoes, but she has a lot of hand me downs, so she just borrowed Caleb's. Funny that they wear the same size.
4:45 pm - Swimming lessons are over and we rush to change Hannah into normal clothes in the locker room because we need to drop her off at Activity Days. It starts at 4:30, but her leader was insistent on the phone last night that I bring her late. She promised to bring her home (what a bargaining tool!)
5:00 pm - We leave Hannah at Activity Days...30 minutes late
5:10 pm - Home again. I change Bekah and Caleb's diapers. Bekah is poopy again. She really needs some new clothes because she has drooled all over hers, but I don't care. Sorry my sweet baby.
5:25 pm - I start dinner. I make spaghetti. Hannah comes home from Activity Days. I instruct the children that it is time for them to get their clothes out for school tomorrow and to make their lunches (I've trained them to make their own lunches every day. I feel a bit like a bad mother, but oh, well). They also start on "The Master Cleaning List." We do it every day before Joe gets home. It is a cleaning list for all of the upstairs. We also have "The Major Cleaning List" which is for deep cleaning. We do it on Saturdays. The lists are numbered and I mix the jobs up every day. The kids randomly pick a number and I put their initials next to the job. It works awesomely (do people use that word anymore?) well.
My major challenge is to try to help Emma do her jobs. It's more work than anything! I can see more and more why the youngest child often doesn't do as much work as the older kids. I have to basically instruct Emma in everything she does, or she gets distracted and stops working. Since I already have three very well trained older kids, it is easier to just let Emma go. Boy, and I have two kids younger than her! I need to stay focused and take the time to teach her to work!
5:45 pm - Joe gets home. I don't quite have dinner ready yet, and the kids are still cleaning. I have to leave, though for a meeting at the girl's school (Joe is actually home early so that I can go). I wouldn't usually attend this particular meeting, but the school has lost it's principal and stuff lately and they are discussing it in a Q&A session with parents. I really want to be there.
6:05 pm - I slink in late to the meeting, having left Joe to help the kids with dinner. I shoveled down some food on the road. The meeting is great and I am really glad I went.
6:35 pm - I leave the meeting early because Hannah and Lizzie have been asked to sing at a Stake Primary Leadership meeting. I need to get them there by 7 and accompany them.
6:55 pm - We make it (early!) to the meeting. Unfortunately, it was the wrong place!!! They were also having a stake meeting of the same sort. Crazy, eh? We waited until I realized that no one from my ward was there and we snuck out. So we drive like crazy (the girl's musical number was supposed to be the opening song). We try another building, but that wasn't it either. Finally, at 7:15, we find the right place. They were waiting for us. They hadn't even started. How embarrassing. The girls were so sweet, though, and the spirit was very strong. I was happy that we didn't give up the search.
7:30 pm - Home again, home again, jiggedy jig. Joe has fed the kids (including Bekah) and cleaned up the dinner mess.
7:45 pm - Jammies, teeth brushing, scriptures, and family prayer.
Lizzie (6), Hannah (8), Ammon (10), and Emma (4) are ready for scripture study
Caleb (2) is not quite ready yet. Sigh
8:30 pm - Kids are in bed and now I am blogging. I should probably be working on that darn cookbook, but I just don't want to right now. I'll have to work hard tomorrow. I am falling behind!! Joe and I are going to watch a movie or something after I finish. I should go to bed, instead, because I will probably have another bad night with Bekars, but I just need some "down time" without the kids. Joe will let me sleep in on the weekends so I can grab a little sleep then.
Disclaimer: I usually don't have meetings in the evening like this. Typically after dinner I am just at home. On Mondays we have FHE, and on Tuesdays Joe is at scouts, and then I have Enrichment and Pack Meetings and such things from time to time, but I would say on most nights I am home. I ESPECIALLY don't typically have TWO meetings in one night, and usually I would have just skipped the parent meeting, but I really felt I should be there. So that may not be an accurate portrayal.
Swimming lessons will also be ending soon, but there are always replacements for that...play practice, t-ball, gymnastics, karate...the kids are allowed to do one activity at a time, in addition to scouts and activity days. It wouldn't be crazy if I didn't have six kids! I only have four that do activities. I can hardly imagine when all six are busy!!! I am always torn between giving my kids opportunities and keeping our lives from getting too crazy. I know that the Brethren have counseled us time after time to not "over schedule." I thought I had a good compromise by letting the kids do only one activity at a time (and not much of anything in the summer), but with so many kids all those activities add up (in cost as well). What is everyone's opinion? Where did you find the balance?
I again want to say how much I appreciate Elder Ballard's counsel this past conference to "enjoy the moments." It is easy for me to hurry through my day, trying to rush us from one thing to the next, but I have been trying more to sit back and enjoy some of those precious, precious moments...like when Emma is so vigorously arguing a point and sounding so adult, but still having that little baby voice, or when Caleb gives me his mischievous look about something naughty he did, or when Ammon helps Hannah with her homework, or when I see the kids laughing on the trampoline, or when Lizzie snuggles up to me during scriptures, or when Bekah giggles and giggles at Joe and I on our bed after the older munchkins are all asleep. They are all so wonderful, and will be gone, oh, so soon!
3 comments:
Correction: Joe likes a few burritos sprinkled on top of his bucket of sour cream.
You know...I actually thought Joe had LESS sour cream than normal. He likes to clog his arteries up in an attempt to gain weight. Cute guy. :)
By the way, for anyone who is interested, at Women's Conference they had a session about overscheduling. Here is a link to the article. I didn't attend W.C. (I WISH I could have), but I appreciate reading this. http://www.mormontimes.com/WC_education.php?id=1007
She says that your child shouldn't have more than two activities. So I guess I'm fine by limiting my kids to one activity in addition to scouts and activity days. THEY aren't overscheduled by this amount, just I am. Oh, well! :)
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