Breakfast & Morning Routine

My alarm goes off at 7:15am so I can feed Sarge by 7:30am. By 8am, the girls are up and it is breakfast time. Dave gets their breakfast going while I finish feeding Sarge. Then he goes to the living room to read his Bible. After that he heads to work, which means he walks into his office in the corner of our bedroom! After the girls are finished with breakfast, they clean the table and then they are free to go play while I do some morning chores. I usually empty the dishwasher, load the dishwasher, start a load of laundry, lay Sarge down for his morning nap at 8:45am and get myself dressed and ready for the day. In an ideal world, I would like to be dressed and ready for the day before any of my children are awake, but with a baby, that means I would have to get up earlier and I would rather sleep. When he is older, I will get back to my normal routine of getting dressed before the kids are up.

Morning School Time

Around 9:30am, I run the little small vacuum cleaner in the kitchen and family room and that is the girls’ signal to clean up and get ready for school! We begin our school time by sitting on our rug in the homeschool room and reading our Bible story, going over our Bible Memory Verses and doing our Calendar Time. I do school with Sweet Pea first and Little Bug typically wants to join us because she still loves Ready-Made Preschool. When it is time for Little Bug to do her school work, Sweet Pea knows her options are to do something from her Alphabet Basket or another educational activity/game in our homeschool room. Often times, she wants to sit on my lap and she observes Little Bug’s school time! Around 11am we head outside to ride bikes and play outside. At 11:30am I get Sarge up from his nap and it is time for him to eat again. While I feed him the girls usually watch an educational DVD.

Lunch

After Sarge is finished with his bottle, I put him in the jumperoo and go to prepare lunch. Lunch is served on a blanket in the living room while the girls continue to watch TV. This is not ideal to me but, in this season, it is what works best to keep the peace while I am trying to feed the baby and prepare lunch for everyone else! This was our most hectic time of day, but when I decided to make show time be during lunchtime, the chaos melted away. Ideally, I would love for us all to eat together at the table and have lovely conversations with one another. But we don’t live in an ideal world, do we?! I couldn’t deal with the messes (for some reason my girls are waaaaay less messy when they eat on a blanket in the living room!) and the bickering that was sure to happen if we were all gathered around the table for lunch. So in the living room in front of the TV it is!

Once every one is eating, I usually get my lunch and go sit on the couch by Sarge and eat. Once I am done I get up and quickly do 10-15 minutes of chores (lunch clean up, laundry). By this time (12:30ish) I turn the TV off and sit in the rocking chair to read some board books to Sarge. The girls gather around to listen to the books too. By 12:45, I go do Sarge’s naptime routine and get him down for his afternoon nap while the girls are bringing their plates to the sink. As soon as I get Sarge down, I put Sweet Pea down for her nap. It is 1pm by the time she gets down.

Afternoon

Once the little ones are down for their naps, Little Bug and I do a little more school since we can’t quite get it all finished during our Morning School Time. This is also when we do our Read Aloud, a favorite time of day for Little Bug and me! The next part of our day is also another favorite time of time for this introverted Mama: rest time! While the little ones are still napping, Little Bug and Mama have a time of rest. Little Bug “rests” for half an hour on her bed while she listens to her Jim Weiss stories. After half an hour, she is free to get and play independently for an hour. Her activity of choice lately has been crafting. This girl LOVES to craft and she is so creative. She spends the remainder of her time in the homeschool room crafting. Everyone is up from naps at 3:30pm. The girls head out to the back yard to play while I sit just inside to feed Sarge. Then I will either head outside with Sarge or lay him on a blanket with toys to play while I do some household chores. Usually by 4:30ish we are all in the front yard again and Little Bug is hoping and praying her little neighborhood friend will come out to play! If she does, the girls all play together until it is time to go in for dinner. If she doesn’t come out to play we go on a walk in the neighborhood. Sarge enjoys his stroller rides!

Dinner & Family Time

I am not a cook. It is just not my thing. I have tried, but it just works better in our family to leave the cooking to Dave. Now that he works from home, he gets off at 5pm and starts cooking dinner. This used to be such a hectic time of day as well and then we found this rhythm and it’s been glorious. We do need to find more recipes to try and it is on my to-do list. That I can handle! We aim to sit down to eat dinner together around the table at 5:30ish. Dinner time has turned into a pretty pleasant time of day for the family as we gather around the table. There are still moments, of course, but overall, we enjoy talking together and eating our meal together. Sarge naps from 5-6pm. When this nap was 2 hours long, it limited our ability to get out of the house. The timing was actually pretty good though because it was during the coldest part of winter when it was fun to just stay home by the fire! As Sarge has shorten this nap over time, we now have enough time for a family walk through the neighborhood after Sarge’s nap and before bath time!

Bath time & Bedtime

Around 6:30pm it is bath time. Everyone gets a bath just about every night out of necessity. Our children like to get dirty! Sometimes the girls have already had their baths before dinner because they were that dirty from playing outside! Dave does the girls’ baths and I bathe Sarge separately. After bath the girls have Daddy time. They get completely ready for bed with Daddy’s help and then they play and read books while I feed Sarge and get him to bed by 7:15/7:30pm. As soon as Sarge is in bed, I put Sweet Pea to bed while Dave puts Little Bug to bed. Little Bug always wants me to come tell her goodnight too and I do once I leave Sweet Pea’s bedroom. By 8pm all three are tucked in bed and Dave and I have the evenings to ourselves which is imperative for our marriage. Dave gives Sarge a dreamfeed at 10:30pm and then our lights are out at 11pm, midnight at the latest! I don’t do chores after the kids are in bed as a general rule, but on Laundry Day I have dumped all the clean laundry on our bed and Dave and I fold and put it all away after the kids are in bed. This was actually Dave’s idea when I was frustrated about the laundry and it works well. I am back to having my Quiet Time at night instead of the morning. Right before Sarge I had FINALLY gotten into a good routine of starting my days with the Lord. I just can’t wake up any earlier. I am a night owl by nature and going to bed by 11pm most nights is a miracle in and of itself! Once Sarge is older, I hope to go back to morning Quiet Times.

- Elaine