Routine

When Luke was born, one of my first missions was to establish a routine. From the time that he was about 2 months old, we had a written schedule posted on the refrigerator detailing when he would (most likely) eat, "play" and sleep. I scheduled events completely around his nap and feeding schedule and, for the most part, he kept to the schedule unless he was sick. To this day, he prefers to have a plan with set times for his day. If you ask him, he will tell you that he wakes up at "seven - zero - zero," watches his show, eats breakfast, goes to school or plays at home, eats lunch, watches one more show, takes a nap at 2:00, drinks apple juice, eats dinner, plays, takes a bath, eats snack and goes to bed. He likes knowing what is going to happen and when.

When Benjamin came along, all bets were off. When I would normally be starting to solidify a routine, I was in complete survival mode. He had whooping cough and for at least a month would wake up coughing every 45 minutes. Night and Day. During every coughing spurt, one of us had to rock him to help him calm down, so we were both only half awake from mid-April until the beginning of June.   Once everything settled down, we established our new routine and kept to it as much as possible.

Having three children, however, has changed life in our house.  For the past two weeks, I've been trying to write down our daily routine to hang on the refrigerator.  (I like to do this so that in case I have to rush out and leave the kids with someone new, they'll know what we usually do and when.  Like I said, my kids thrive on routine.)  It hasn't worked a bit.  With an infant and a potty training toddler, one day never looks like the last.  Sometimes we eat lunch at 11:30, other times we eat at 1:00.  Sometimes the boys are dressed by 8:00 and sometimes we all stay in our jammies until 5:30.  Bedtime and my work time are still set in stone, but everything else is up for grabs.

Boys in their jammies after Easter Sunday dinner.

Four years ago, I would've found this to be extremely frustrating.  After all, how was I going to schedule doctor's appointments and play dates if we didn't have a schedule?   Now, however, I find it to be somewhat freeing. 

I'm starting to enjoy the flexibility to our day.  I was so proud of myself for choosing to go at the last minute with the boys and my parents to the zoo on Good Friday.   I didn't schedule anything around Olivia's feedings, but just decided that I'd find a place to feed her when she was ready.  I gave the go-ahead to visit the monkey exhibit even though it was dangerously close to lunchtime (although, my mom saved the day with her bag of Nana snacks!).  And, even though it was already right at the boys' nap time, I agreed to go to lunch at Wendy's.  We had a great day, made some memories, and even though we threw our routine out the window, everyone recovered and (as my friend Michele would say) no one died.

Right before Ben fell off the turtle statue.

Watching the hippo get a bath and lunch.

I even sometimes find myself doing spur of the moment things like walking home from my parents' house (a mile or so) with the boys at 7:30 at night.  Yes, I should have dressed them warmer and started out earlier, but we had a great time at the park and they were completely exhausted when we arrived home!