Week in the Life -- Monday

WARNING: VERY LONG POST AHEAD BUT IT IS BROKEN UP WITH PICTURES :)

I am going to blog about everything I do for an entire week. It will make for some long posts but since this blog is mainly to record our family memories, I want to do it anyway. Kelly, from Kelly's Korner, did this at the end of June and I thought it was such a good idea that I wanted to do it to. Here are Kelly's reasons for doing it (taken from this post):

"Okay - here we go. Sunday through Thursday of this week I'm going to document our days. All of it. This will be SO mundane and boring for most of you but I will enjoy looking back to see how we spent our days when my girls were 2.5 and 3 months."

So if you change "my girls" to "Sam and Rachel" and "3 months" to "almost five months" you'll have my reasons for doing it. And I'm also choosing to do a Monday-Sunday week just to be fully documented. (Because I can be a little anal that way!) Enjoy! And if you don't enjoy it, at least I hope you will be illuminated :)

I woke up at 6:45 this morning. I had great plans to resume jogging today (my jogging spree was interrupted when I hurt a ligament in my knee at the end of September and I want to get back into it) but because of my cold I couldn't really breathe this morning so I didn't think jogging would be useful. I nursed Rachel, had a shower and got dressed.

I ate breakfast at 7:30. I eat various things for breakfast but then I'll eat the same thing for two weeks straight. Today I had a cinnamon raisin bagel, toasted with butter, and a strawberry yogurt. I like to eat breakfast before Sam wakes up or he wants to eat my food. I also made a pot of Earl Grey Tea, and checked e-mail, Facebook, and blogs I like to read. I decided to use time while the kids were still sleeping to write thank you cards for Rachel's gifts, while listening to music. When I'm home during the day iTunes is pretty much on since I like having music playing. I also paid bills and talked about financial stuff with Dave before he headed off to campus.

At 9:00 I made Sam's breakfast of instant oatmeal because I figured he would be up soon and at 9:08 Sam woke up in a good mood. I did a diaper change and then he had his oatmeal and two yogurts (which he gets for himself from the fridge) for breakfast. I finished thank you cards (and sent a gloating e-mail to Dave -- these things have been hanging over our heads for three months now!), started dishes and answered Sam's questions about what the songs I was listening to were about. "Mysterious Ways" inspired a conversation about being sneaky and I pretended to sneak up on Sam! He thought it was very funny.

At 9:45 Sam finished breakfast and, since he refuses to wear a bib, I needed to take his pajamas off. He wanted to be "naked in my diaper" for a bit so I let him play like that while I continued with the dishes.

At 10:00 I changed Sam's poopy diaper. I had to convince him that wearing his dirty diaper would eventually get uncomfortable, as he was not happy about the diaper change, and calmed him down by showing him his poop -- things you only do as a parent! By 10:15 dishes were done, the kitchen table was wiped, and I had time to read Sam a book

At 10:18 Rachel finally woke up, complaining but not wailing, and I nursed her while reading to Sam. I read him the same book twice because he said, "That was lovely. Let's read it again." How can you resist that? I got Rachel changed and dressed while reading Sam another book and made the bed.

By 10:41 Rachel was in the bouncy seat and I got a load of laundry started with Sam's help. I looked at the rest of weekly flyers I hadn't had time to look at over the weekend for good deals on diapers, and made a grocery and errand list, since I finally decided we should, in fact, head out today. I convinced Sam to get dressed, got everyone ready, nursed Rachel and checked her diaper after a false poop alarm. She hasn't pooped in 10 days so we're on high alert here!

By 11:30 we were finally out of the house and we hit the library to pick up books and then went on to Shoppers and Dollarama for a few things.

At 12:05 Sam had a collision with the basket he was pushing at Dollarama. At 12:13 Sam was finally calm after the collision but only because I promised him a cookie from Save-On! By 12:30 we were finally at Save-On with the celebratory (FREE!) cookie. Sam counted out sixteen mushrooms for supper tonight, we ran into Debbie from TBO, and Rachel finally napped.

By 1:15 we were home again. Rachel woke up at 1:05, Sam put all the produce in the fridge, I nursed Rachel, and switched the laundry from the washer to the dryer and started another load. I had to dump unfolded laundry from three days ago on our bed so we had empty laundry baskets. sigh. Rachel hung out in the swing and Sam played in our room.

By 1:45 Sam was eating leftovers for lunch and my lunch was put on hold to nurse Rachel again. This is not a rare occurrence. I drank a glass of iced tea to keep me going :) At 2:00 I FINALLY got to eat lunch, all the while convincing Sam to keep eating HIS lunch instead of MINE. I find this is the most frustrating thing about Sam right now (that and trying to get him to stay sitting on his bum in his booster seat). I had toasted tomato sandwiches for lunch and check out my sprout-y tomato below. It looked like that when I cut it open. It was the weirdest thing. Rachel hung out in the bouncy seat and during the chaos Dave phoned to chat. We decided I would call him back later.

At 2:18 I changed Rachel's diaper, cleaned up Sam from lunch, changed Sam's diaper, read him two of his new library books, and put him down for a nap. Rachel hung out on our bed sucking her soother and scratching at our duvet cover! Sam was down for nap by 2:31 and Rachel and I continued to do laundry, getting more going and folding all the laundry from a few days ago.

I checked on Sam at 3:00 since I heard him singing. sigh. He still wasn't asleep but at least he's good with hanging out in his crib awake and being quiet. I went back to laundry with Miss Rachel. Rachel started getting fussy around 3:10 so I nursed her and returned Dave's call from earlier. Rachel fell asleep so I couldn't finish folding laundry. Too bad :)

3:25 was time to for my favourite part of the afternoon -- Coke break! -- and I finally got around to getting pictures of Sam and Rachel, which we had taken this summer, ready to send out to people. The thank you cards and pictures have been sitting in an empty popcorn box on our microwave and Dave and I are both ready to have it out of our space, plus we want people to know we are thankful for things they sent to Rachel!

Sam has been having a harder time going to bed by 9 so Dave and I have decided that I will wake him up from his nap at 4:00. So at 4:07 I woke Sam up from his nap. On days Sam doesn't nap he is a BEAR so not napping isn't an option. He was difficult to wake up today since he didn't fall asleep until after 3. Sam ate Hallowe'en treats while I got more pictures ready to send out. Then Sam did stickers. I love love love his long attention span! I finished with all the pictures I wanted to send out. Then it was back to laundry. It's never-ending :)

At 4:57 was the best part of the day -- Daddy/Dave came home from work!!! Sam wanted to "do some e-mails" with Dave (I signed up for Productive Parenting and I get an e-mail everyday with an activity to do for Sam and Rachel. They are age appropriate activities and Sam LOVES them.) so they read some suggested books and played with play dough and I started supper.

Rachel woke up at 5:30 and Dave held her while I continued with supper. I nursed Rachel so I could hopefully eat supper in peace and Dave took over supper prep. Sam was highly entertained by the old calculator during this time!

At 6:00 was supper time! Rachel hung out in her bouncy seat. Supper, a new recipe (Pasta Point of No Return from LooneySpoons), was amazing, if I do say so myself! I had two huge helpings.

After supper I uploaded photos to the blog (for this post, in fact), Dave spelled words for Sam with the magnets on the fridge and I went back to folding laundry. Dave and Sam played guitar and Rachel hung out on the play mat. I finished folding laundry and got some put away.

At 7:20 Rachel wanted to nurse so I nursed her to sleep and Sam helped me put his laundry away. Then we made some thank you cards and a birthday card too! Rachel only slept for ten minutes due to crashing dishes :( She hung out in her Moses basket while Dave talked on the phone.

Dave gave Sam a bath starting around 8:20, and I worked on this blog post and finished putting away laundry. I changed Rachel into her pajamas, put my pajamas on and Rachel spent more time in the bouncy seat and nursing. Then she, Sam and Dave read some books on our bed while I worked on this post.

It's 9:30 now. Dave has put Sam to bed, Rachel is in her Moses basket and might be going to sleep and I am catching up on blogs, e-mail and Facebook. I'm making some herbal tea and a snack and then I'm off to bed soon since today has worn me out and tomorrow is another busy day.