I have been home with my girls for the over two months and we have gotten on a good daily schedule. I am very thankful that I happy babies that usually sleep and eat well and on a schedule. However, I attribute how pleasant my children are and how sane my husband and I are to the fact that we stick to a pretty regular schedule.
While there are important events where we will bend the schedule and in general church days do not fit into our schedule we have learned to adapt. I have, however, decided that there are certain things that I wont break our schedule for simply because it is not worth the trouble later. You will see that I include a lot of flexibility within some of the time periods because life happens. Right now I have a two-year old (M) and twins that are 6 months old (A & N). Here is the schedule that we generally follow on weekdays.
6:30 am – I wake up
My alarm goes off. Depending on how the night was with the babies determines if I actually get out of bed. Generally, this is my time to get up and get a shower before everyone is awake. If I am feeling really productive I’ll fit in a thirty minute workout while everyone sleeps.
7 am – 7:30 am – M awake
Usually M wakes up during this time. I’ll get her up, change her diaper, and get breakfast. I do not get her dressed now because she is a messy eater and I have been frustrated many times after getting her dressed and she winds up with oatmeal in her lap. If the babies aren’t awake yet I will sit and play with her for a few minutes.
8 am – Babies awake and breakfast
The babies are usually awake by this time. They get a diaper change and if we are planning to go out I get them dressed at that time. I find that if they are dressed right out of bed that it saves me time getting out of the house later. They usually get a bottle between 8 and 8:30. At six months old they can usually go four to five hours between feeds. This allows us to go out or get other things done in the morning. I try to avoid going out in the afternoon.
After the babies are fed they go in their sit-me-up seats. They love being able to watch their sister run around and it helps them work on their head control. They have also become more interested in the toys that are attached to the seats.
M spends this time playing independently. I will clean up from breakfast and we brush our teeth together, which she loves. After I have everything cleaned up I play with her and the twins a little bit. If the twins start getting fussy I will take them out of their chairs and give them some floor time. For this I have to be present because M loves them so much that she wants to play with them. Which can be dangerous, as in, she will smother them with hugs.
If we are going out I will get M dressed right after we brush our teeth and we can usually be out of the house by 9 o’clock. I generally try not to do anything earlier than that because it is hard to get them out of the house that early.
10:30 am – Morning Nap
If we are home then this is our nap time. I change all three girls and put them down for naps. The babies will sleep between a half hour and an hour, M will usually sleep until noon. If we are out, M can do without this in her schedule as long as we aren’t doing anything too exciting. She sometimes falls asleep in the car on the way home which makes up for missing this nap.
This is my time to get any big chores done that I can’t do while watching everyone or will get messed up by a child. So I’ll usually do a load of laundry, fold clothes, or sweep the floors. I try to straighten up the living room which is where we spend most of our time. If I need to make a phone call or pay bills this is the time for that.
12 pm – Lunch Time
Everyone starts waking up right around noon. My goal is always to have lunch made before they all wake up. This way if the babies wake up cranky before M I can just grab her, change her diaper, and stick her in her high chair to eat. The babies also eat around this time so I will have their bottles ready as well. Some days I will eat before everyone wakes up because honestly it’s nice to eat a meal without interruption. At other times I sit and talk to M while we have our lunch.
After lunch is free time. We will transition to our basement where there is space for larger toys. We are currently working on making a playroom so as of now, everything is in the family room. While we are down there, the babies can play in their jumper and M has a play kitchen and a ton of books and puzzles to look at.
1:30 pm – TV Time
As you know from my review of Sesame Place, M loves Elmo. So if we are home we will watch an episode of Sesame Street at this time. TV time also works to break up the afternoon of playing, because after a while M needs something to calm her down or she starts getting a little crazy. When the show goes off at 2 pm I start preparing M that nap time will be coming soon.
Now that we are about to get rid of cable (more on that later) we have been getting DVDs of her favorite shows from the library. This allows us more flexibility in our schedule. When I see she’s getting over energized I’ll put a show on so she can calm down for a little bit.
3 pm – Afternoon Nap
We got into the routine of 3 pm naps mostly because last school year this was around the time that I would pick M up and she would fall asleep in the car. It works good because it is around the time that my husband gets home from work so he can generally come home to a quiet house. The babies are so used to it now that I was amazed to see that while we were out one day they both fell asleep at almost exactly 3 pm. That’s a good schedule for you!
Sometimes we will lay M down and she doesn’t sleep. This is okay with us as long as she is quiet. We feel that quiet time is really important and we all need that time to rest. If she is really tired, though, she’ll sleep around two hours, but most days it’s between and hour to an hour and a half. This is enough time for both my husband and I to rest and talk.
6 pm – Dinner
My goal is to have dinner ready around 6. Depending on what I am making I will get started on it before the girls wake up. My husband knows that if I am working on dinner that he’s on duty. He’ll get them up, babies fed, and everyone settled so I don’t have to stop what I am doing. After dinner is another play time. Sometimes we go to the basement (usually when there’s a good Jeopardy episode on), but other days it’s not worth the work of carrying everyone downstairs so we will hang out in the living room.
7:30 – 8 pm – Bath and Bed
If it’s bath night (we bathe M every other day unless she’s been swimming or playing outside) we will get her in the bath around 7:30 pm. This gives plenty of time for her to play and enjoy her bath without having to be rushed. Our goal is always to get her in bed by eight. We have been blessed that she is an excellent sleeper. She rarely wakes up at night and she doesn’t fight us about going to sleep. She has a simple routine of pajamas, book, telling everyone goodnight (this includes a very cute “goodnight, sisters”), and into bed.
9 – 9:30 pm – Babies in Bed
The babies get their last bottle during this time. We have found that anything much later than this makes them restless at night. Also, anything much earlier has them waking up in the night. 9:30 pm is truly the sweet spot. We have been gradually trying to get them off their middle of the night bottle (we’ve finally made it!) and this is one of the things that really helped. If it is a bath night for the babies, we will start baths around 9 pm so that when we are done they are just hungry enough and tired enough that filling their bellies will put them to sleep.
I hope reading our schedule has helped you in some way. Remember, I am just an everyday mom. While I have been gifted multiple parenting books I find that there is so much information it’s overwhelming and I have to sort through it to get to the information I need. I am much more likely to read a real mom’s blog post about a topic and have learned many different things from blogs. My goal is always to provide that same level of information to my readers.
As always I would love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment below or on social media.
Martina