April 26: Workday Mornings

They just aren't my favorite. At all.

Workday mornings come with the added hustle and bustle of getting myself ready for work (both physically and mentally) plus getting all three children ready for either Lori's or school. Nate is home on these morning to help crack the proverbial whip but for some reason, I feel like my whip is cracking hardest on everyone on those Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. (Read: psycho mom). I mean, my workday mornings are when I find myself becoming a giant nag, especially when I have to light a fire under Truman's butt to get moving: 'Please eat your breakfast. Take another bite. Keep eating, stop playing, we are going to be late to school. Please keep eating!!!!!' Throw in a tantrum or five by Cecelia, a hungry/fussy baby that is ready to nap before we get out the door, a possible ill-timed diaper blow out, a minor injury to any child after not listening and running/falling down, the constant whining/just waking up for the day mentality and the need for me to be professional and presentable? Yep, you have a recipe for YELLING and I hate hate hate starting our day off on the wrong foot. We have both good and bad workday mornings of course, but the bad ones really stick with you---you know?

So yes, Nate is also home to help me on MWF before work---he adjusted his schedule this way on purpose when I returned to work after Porter. He is usually the one who walks Truman over to school and he then does the daycare drop off after that (usually, unless it makes more sense for me to drive that way, if my first patient is near Lori). Nate is truly awesome and on the rare occasion I have to do a workday morning alone, I want to cry into my (very cold) coffee. Not really, but it's much harder to do without Nate and I'm glad to have my teammate present for three mornings per week. I still think I'd trade the help in the a.m. instead of having him home earlier in the p.m. but I don't know...the evenings are a different post entirely. But that is our trade off: I have him home for three mornings to help but I fly solo almost every single weekday evening instead. We are looking very much forward to Nate's new summer hours that begin in a few weeks. He might even be able to eat dinner with us more than one time on a weekday!

But I wanted to write out a bit of the tasks that need to be checked off each workday morning, since I did a weekend day for my DiTL this quarter. I never want to forget the craziness of working outside the home and also using childcare outside the home, with two separate drop offs for our three kids (school and Lori's). Organization is *key* for these kind of mornings and it's definitely been a work in progress since adding a third child to the mix. I think we are hitting our stride but sometimes the yelling happens and I vow to do better the next day. 

Also, if we had a nanny life would be so much easier in the mornings. Or if I didn't work outside of the home.* OR BOTH:)

A typical workday morning:

I wake up at 6:15 and head downstairs where I make the coffee (8 cups usually, freaking best part of every morning--I start looking forward to coffee before I go to bed at night), let Henry outside, open the blinds on the lower level of the house, and clean up a few dishes/unload the dishwasher if needed. Then I start setting out the big kids' breakfasts: whole milk, vitamins, apples OR a Gogurt, and sometimes half of a frozen waffle with peanut butter (and Nutella if I'm feeling extra fun). Nate is in the shower at this point and Porter might be waking up around 6:30-ish. Sometimes Nate will bring Porter down with him after the shower or sometimes I will go and get the babe.

Porter's routine is that he needs a 6 oz bottle STAT and we usually let him lay in his Breeze playard  in the sunroom for this 'Mr. Independent' bottle boy. He also needs a diaper change, to get dressed for the day, and after that he is happy to rotate between playing with toys on the floor and sitting in his highchair to throw food at Henry. So the bottle, diaper/clothes, then play and some high chair time makes up the entirety of Porter's morning from about 6:30 or 6:45 when he wakes until 8:40 when Nate takes him to Lori's.

Back to my routine: once the big kids' breakfasts are ready to be consumed (although they are still sleeping upstairs) I move on to making my lunch for the day. This was something I always used to do the night before a workday but for some reason I just don't have the energy to prep in the evenings. Note to self: try to make it happen to cut down on morning time stress. Usually I just make a PBJ, bring an apple, some chips, and two gigantic bottles of water for my day in and out of the car. And once Porter is done with his bottle in the other room, I'll usually jump back and forth from the kitchen to the sunroom to get him dressed, set him up to play, or else I'll just sit him in the high chair in the kitchen with me so I can keep going with my check list. 

After my lunch is made, I will make and eat my own breakfast. Lately this always consists of a ham/egg/cheese sandwich on an English muffin. Usually I eat standing up in the kitchen while I tend to Porter/the dishes. Nate comes downstairs around 6:45 and the big kids come down at 7:00. Their tasks for the morning include eating breakfast, getting dressed, and brushing their teeth. One would think this could take maybe 10 minutes TOPS but hahahahaha, it's usually a struggle to condense this routine to 1 hour for Truman (walks to school around 8:10) and 1.5 hours for Cecelia (out the door to Lori's around 8:40 or so). 

Once all three of the children are happily/peacefully/JOYFULLY eating their breakfasts without any fighting or whining (sarcasm), I head upstairs to take my shower around 7:15. Many times CC comes with me and will bring her breakfast with her into the bathroom---the opposite of appetizing, if you ask me. I take my shower, get dressed, do my hair and makeup, brush my teeth and head back downstairs around 8:00. If Cecelia stays downstairs and isn't my big 'helper', I can usually get myself ready faster than this. 

Nate and Truman walk to school around 8:10 and CC usually tags along. I get a few minutes with just mister Porter and adore that quiet time together. Then Nate and CC come back from school, we all get various bags ready for the day (Lori bag, work bag, lunch bag, etc) and I help load the offspring into Nate's car by 8:40. This is when I will say that forgoing giant winter boots, snowsuits, big winter coats, hats and gloves is the best thing ever. We still have to layer outerwear but someday, my friends, we will be able to walk directly out the door without any bundling. And it shall be glorious.

I might check my work phone quickly once everyone is gone, then load my haul into the van (work bag, lunch bag, two ginormous water bottles). Do NOT miss my pump bag on mornings like this! Again, sometimes I will take CC and Porter to Lori's before my first patient but not so much lately. Either way, as I pull out of the garage, I already feel like I've run a marathon most of the time. But it's also a big accomplishment to make it out of the morning alive, so (fist pound) to everyone on a time schedule with small children. Ain't no joke, man.

A picture to summarize our mornings: I am ready to wear my PT face but the lighting makes it look like I have a bit of a lazy eye or something. And Cecelia and Porter both needed to be on my lap for breakfast and they are not expressive at all. But hey, Friday morning!
Before work with the littles


*{disclaimer: I don't think staying at home is easy, by any means. More on my 'days at home' schedule and the separate kind of stress in another post, coming soon to a blog near you.}

13 comments:

  1. That is a very long time to be doing things in the morning before also going to work! I am up for an hour max before we leave but I know that will increase soon, sigh. The biggest thing we DON'T do in the morning is a real breakfast for anyone and that is a HUGE timesaver. Even the smoothies we are rushing them through but it's usually less than 10 minutes and really not that bad. I drink mine on the way to work and Ben downs his in about 90 seconds. I eat breakfast at work but it's usually just a nutrigrain bar or lately a bagel. Typically I'm up at 6:45 (on a good day) and kids are up around 7, and we're out the door by 7:45 or so. It feels long but really I know is as short as it can possibly be! Will be super interesting to see how much it changes with the kids in school that starts so late here (9:30).

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    1. Yeah, you have it pretty good over there, lady!! I know we could skip CC's breakfast since Lori does feed her, but I hate to send Truman to school on a tiny breakfast. Could do smoothies again, but those take way longer than 10 min to consume for my kids, too. I think they aren't all that hungry in the mornings! And Nate and I could never survive on just a smoothie---maybe as a precursor to a bigger breakfast, but obviously I can't make one for myself once at work!

      Anyway, good food for thought (no pun intended). Thinking of trying smoothies again--right now they are more of a weekend thing.

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    2. No one in our family but me cares about breakfast :) The kids seriously can go like a full hour without eating after waking up on the weekends, especially Annie - so the smoothie for her is MORE than enough to last until her breakfast at school at 9 which is a muffin and an applesauce pack usually (and then she doesn't eat lunch until 12). Luke just has toast at Susan's house so nothing huge. Ben has a smoothie and that's it but on weekends VERY often doesn't eat until lunch!!! I'd die.

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  2. That sounds a lot like my mornings although I have the reverse in that my hubs is gone usually before the kids are up but home every evening. Life has gotten a lot better since I started working from home, yet somehow it's still too stressful (oh yeah, maybe because I can't quite get up early enough to get anything done before I have children clinging to me). I sit here at 11:14 commenting on your blog when I said I would go to bed at 10:30 and I haven't done anything to prep for tomorrow. So...spoiler alert...I think tomorrow morning will be stressful!

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  3. Yes. Our workday mornings are crazy too, even though I have flexibility of getting to work pretty much any time I want. And I have a nanny and she does make things so much easier (mainly holding Titus if he's fussing) but I still find myself thinking "there are three adults here...why is this so hard?!"

    I hate prepping the night before - nightime is my chill time and I don't like cutting into it with tasks like prepping the coffee and laying out clothes - but I'm always happy the next day that I did it. Makes things so much less stressful in the morning.

    Completely unsolicited advice - could you lead Truman to his own devices? He has three tasks - make sure he knows what they are and then leave him to it. He might get to school with half eaten breakfast at first, but maybe he'd catch on after a few times. Also, again unsolicited, but when I'm having a problem like that with Isaac, I ask him to help me solve it. I've been very impressed with his solutions and usually if he's involved in making the new plan, he's more motivated to fix it.

    Toddler girl tantrums first thing each morning, though? The worst. Let me know if you find a solution there. #pipedream

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    1. I think we *do* leave it mostly up to Truman as to how much he eats and if he isn't that hungry, fine. But he just likes to play in the morning and takes awhile to wake up, so if I DON'T encourage him to move along with the routine I think he would be late to school and then devastated. Good idea in theory to let Truman take the reigns----he's a pretty independent guy but the mornings call for a bit of guidance, for sure!!

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  4. This sounds like a LOT. My getting ready in the morning with one kid routine pales in comparison, for sure. I think the biggest willdcard with kids is never knowing when they're going to wake up. Clearly this gets better as they get older (please tell me yes...), but, especially with the earlier sunrise these days, I have no clue if my nine month old will sleep until 6:15 or 7:15. The amount of morning baby-wrangling makes a huge difference in how smoothly (or not) things go.

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    1. It gets better as they get older!!!!! But yes, the unpredictable nature of mornings with children is super hard when you have to maintain a set schedule!

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  5. Mornings are always a struggle since I don't wan to get up! When working I got up around 6, woke my daughter up around 6:45. Once we made it down the stairs, things were usually good. Then leave the house at 7:10ish. I just had a baby last week, and this being our first solo week, just hoping to have her at school by 8:00-8:30 for breakfast. It will be quite interesting when I return to work with getting two kiddos ready. My husband leaves the house at 6:30 so I run mornings solo....
    I usually enjoyed my commute (35 min+-) to work to listen to some music and get re-centered and mind prep for work.

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    1. Ah, such an adjustment when adding another kid to the mix. You will do great! Impressed you could get your daughter out the door within 30 minutes of her waking up. My kids just don't move fast enough in the mornings!

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  6. Work mornings are so stressful, seriously. I, too, feel as though I've run a marathon before I'm even out of the house! And I've said often recently that if we didn't have a nanny, I would honestly be in the loony bin right now, since my mornings are still so busy, even without having to get the kids out of the house!

    I wish someone would teach my kids how to sleep til 7 a.m. Dave leaves at 6:30 a.m. so I have to be ready by then, so I'm up at 5:30, and many days, there is one if not two kids awake by 6, which makes it harder to get ready. I wish their wake-up times were more predictable! I don't even leave the house til 8, but the NEEEEEDS of three kids all morning on my own is just a lot - four breakfasts, diapers, getting my lunch and stuff packed up, getting dressed, making sure Henry is ready for school, making sure the house is in decent order before Shelly comes... gah. I long for more leisurely mornings someday, even just a couple days a week. Staying home is totally not easy (the opposite of that!!!) but at least there's not the hard deadline to get out of the house.

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    1. I always think about you and your nanny on workday mornings! Glad to know it's not *all* that much easier even without physically getting kids out of the house. Especially since Dave leaves so early!

      And yes. Much much more leisurely on days at home---glad you will get to experience soon!

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  7. We have a rule that none of my four children are allowed downstairs until they are dresses and teeth brushed. Then they can eat breakfast and pack their lunches. If they start eating, they are never done and I can never get them back upstairs :)

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