Day in the Life Winter 2015

I've been wanting to participate in one of these for a long time! I decided that now would be the perfect time while I have a newborn sick with RSV (I may have been a tad ambitious). It was at the start of his illness and I knew it would probably just get worse so I figured I would get this done while he was still feeling relatively okay. I somehow managed to pull it off and I will hopefully look back on it and be glad that I did it.


Thursday, January 29th, 2015

Brodie: 34
Jessica: 29
Ayla: 2 years 10 months
Miles: 1 month



1:15 a.m. Miles is stirring next to me so I nurse him (side-lying nursing FTW!)

1:20 a.m. I hear Ayla calling from her room. Brodie goes in. He stays in there and I assume has fallen asleep in her bed (this has been happening a lot lately).

4:30 a.m. Miles wakes up again to nurse

5:00 a.m. Brodie comes back into our room.

6:15 a.m. Ayla waks up again and Brodie goes back in. She has been sleeping 12 straight hours through the night since she was 2 and these delightful middle of the night wake ups are a relatively new thing. She becomes hysterical if Brodie tries to leave her room. We are trying to come up with a game plan to correct this but maybe we need to just wait it out. I guess maybe having a new sibling has something to do with it?

7:18 I nurse Miles again. I am loving these 3 hour stretches of sleep. Sometimes he even does 4 1/2 hour stretches! Not bad for a newborn, and definitely better than his sister at this age. Miles has RSV (a mild case) and had a couple of coughing fits during the night. It's absolutely heartbreaking and I have a mini panic attack every time he coughs. Ayla picked up a cold from preschool and gave it to him. She has only been sick maybe three times in her almost three years of life so having a sick, tiny baby is new for me.

7:50 Ayla is up for the morning. I go in and get her Pull-Up changed and we head into the kitchen. I give her a probiotic. I take a probiotic and a placenta pill (yep, I'm one of those people).

8:10 I start making breakfast then stop when baby wakes up. Brodie brings him to me. I change Miles because he soaked through his jammies.

8:15 I nurse Miles on the couch. I hear Ayla down the hall telling Brodie "look Daddy! I got my booger out! Look!" She then proceeds to run in and show me. Delightful.

Miles has a coughing fit. Poor guy.

Miles finishes nursing and I put him in the Ergo. I breed babies of the high-needs variety so babywearing works well for us.

8:35 I continue cooking breakfast. We are having blueberry paleo pancakes and bacon. I am challenging myself to eat little to no gluten and no refined sugar today. I've been out of control with eating since Miles was born and I definitely feel it. The style of eating that makes me feel the best is a Paleo/Primal-ish approach. I have a long way to go to get back to it so for now I will start by eliminating foods I am most sensitive to (and coincidentally sort of addicted to). I'm going to have to ignore the homemade brownies calling to me from the fridge all day.

"Mommy, there are baby ducks in these eggs!"

                                                   Sweet little guy is content while I cook 

First batch gets slightly burned.

9:10 a.m. I finish making breakfast. Ayla takes one look at the pancakes and says "I don't want it!"
I somehow convince her to eat it.

I look over at the drying rack slightly annoyed. Brodie and I are in a constant disagreement about this. I like to dry things immediately and put them away. He uses the drying rack and then NEVER puts away the dishes.

9:40 I start cleaning up kitchen. Ayla cleans up her kitchen 

Ayla gets out her pastry making tools and play dough. This particular play dough recipe turned out kind of gross-looking due to the natural food dyes. Good thing she doesn't seem to mind. 

10:00 a.m. I finish cleaning up the kitchen. Why did I think making a big, complicated breakfast was a good idea? I need to work on prepping things on the week end so that we can easily make food during the week. 

I make tea. Ayla requests a clementine. She says, "I don't like oranges, mommy. Only clementines." She notices some scissors on the counter and says that when she is a mommy she can use them. 

I ask Ayla if she would like to try using the potty. Standard answer of "no". I'm trying to be patient with this potty-training thing but she is almost three and I really thought she would be potty trained by now. She knows how to do it but chooses not to most of the time. I really don't want to push her and I think that we will be more successful if we follow her lead. 

10:15: We go downstairs to watch a show, which will likely turn in to more than one show. I tell myself we will eventually get back to our goal of thirty minutes to one hour of T.V. per day (with 30 minutes being the ideal). I will admit that I have gone significantly over that amount since being alone with both kids. 

I catch up on some highly intellectual reading. 

10:30 Miles wakes up and I take him out of the Ergo to nurse. He has another coughing fit and struggles and cries after. Poor little guy.

Miles is fussy so I swaddle him and bounce around with him for a while.

We watch another show and then Ayla builds with Legos while I continue to try to keep baby brother happy.

"Aarrgh. I be Captain Sugar"

11:45 Miles falls asleep in my arms and I take him upstairs to see if I can set him down in his crib. His eyes pop open immediately.

12:00 Ayla is done with Legos. She asks to watch another show. I say no and she freaks out and starts falling apart over everything. Cries for milk and then starts coloring on her princess dolls. She starts aggressively touching Miles' cheek. She calms down and I get her some milk.

12:15 I try to set Miles down in his crib again, He lasts in there for two minutes and then starts coughing and wakes up. I put him in the swing but it doesn't last for too long. I put him in the Ergo and frantically try to get lunch made.

Lunch today: Chicken and apple sausage from Costco, Sweet potato tots, plain yogurt with honey

Ayla picks up my phone and turns on some music. The soundtrack to "Little Women" comes on (one of my favorites). The music helps set a calmer mood in the house which is nice because things have gone downhill ever since we came upstairs to make lunch. I used to be a server in a restaurant years ago and there is a term we used called "in the weeds" when things got chaotic and you couldn't stay on top of everything. I've had this feeling at least once a day since I've been alone with both kids.

After lunch we create a game out of rubber bands and a box

 Miles projectile vomits while in the Ergo and we do a wardrobe change

We sit down for story time

We're hanging in there. I realize how exhausted I am all of a sudden.

 I want a brownie

The rest of the afternoon is kind of a blur. There may have been another show (or two), more fussy baby, more coughing, more toddler hijinks. 

4:00 Ayla has a snack of dates and peanut butter while I start to make dinner. I make dinner for her early on Thursdays because she has dance class at 5:30. 

I heat up some brown rice pasta with red sauce and meatballs. My mom was here helping us out after Miles was born and she left us with about twenty freezer meals. So helpful! 

5:15 Brodie takes Ayla to dance. I used to take her to the Wednesday morning class but we switched over to Thursday nights a couple months ago knowing I would soon be out of commission. I really miss taking her. I will resume taking her when she goes into the three year old class in a couple of months. Apparently Ayla did her whole warm up routine and then came over to Brodie tugging on her leotard saying "my camera, my camera!" He told her he had a camera and would be taking pictures. She said "no, my camera!" and pulled out her little Frozen camera that she had stashed in her leotard. I guess her tutu had been hiding it. 

I realize I'm exhausted and go into my room to relax. I want a brownie but I choose this instead:

I've managed to make my bed and move the clean clothes from the floor to the bed. This feels like a step in the right direction. 

 I watch an episode of Gilmore Girls on Netflix. I binge-watched this for a few weeks after Miles was born. I hibernated with him in my room while I had my mom and mother-in-law here. It was heaven!

6:15 p.m. Brodie and Ayla come home. I give her her gummy vitamins and dose of cod liver oil (yes, she takes it! It's flavored and is not as gross as it sounds). I take some as well as my prenatal vitamins.

6:45 Brodie starts the bedtime routine with Ayla and I listen to a litle bit of this podcast:

http://www.throwingshade.com/

and a little bit of this one:

http://balancedbites.com/podcast

7:20 Brodie finishes putting Ayla to bed and he shows me this video and decide we want to try this with Miles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR3iBaN-758

9:30 p.m. We play on our phones for a little while, put the unfolded laundry into a hamper and call it a night!