Day in the Life: Home Alone with 2
Tuesday was the first day I was home alone with the kids for the day. I talked a little about it (and how nervous I was) in this “Surviving” post. I thought it would be fun to do a “Day in the Life” to document what a typical day was like in this stage in our life. I always meant to do these when I was just home with Jenson. I actually documented most of a day in a note in my phone from December, but never posted it – maybe I’ll just throw a post up for it soon….
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Ages – Jenson, 2.25 years and Marlowe, 3 weeks
6:15 a.m. – Jenson wakes up and Lo gets him out of bed, dressed, and situated with a show on the couch while I sleep for a bit more. He’s been waking early – too early – for a few weeks now. He used to sleep until anytime between 7 – 8 a.m.
6:35 a.m. – I get up, brush my teeth, get some coffee, and settle on the couch with Jenson. Lo leaves for work around 6:50.
6:50 a.m. – Lo leaves for work, and minutes later Marlowe wakes up to eat. She went almost 6 hours before nursing the night before, and this was about 3 hours later…can’t complain about that! Grabbed her from our room and nursed her on the couch while watching Curious George with Jenson. Changed her diaper and clothes. When the show was over, I turned it off and put on “songs” – which is the toddler Pandora station. We read books on the couch while Marlowe fell back to sleep. He brings one book at a time, and when we’re finished, it says “Please stack it”. All of the books we read have to be stacked in a pile – he’s very insistent about it – and later he’ll point to the books and say “I read all these books”.
8:10 a.m. – I put a sleeping Marlowe in the swing while Jenson and I had breakfast. We both had oatmeal. His was plain with blueberries and raisins in it, and mine was an apple cinnamon packet with granola on top. He ate of ton of it (2 toddler bowls full), so he didn’t want anything else. He whined at my legs while I did the dished (“mommy go play” “I want up” “hold you”). I thought about changing my shirt (since I slept in this one) and putting on deodorant, but Marlowe woke up.
9 a.m. – Change Marlowe and Jenson does puzzles on the floor while I feed her. I look at the clock and am surprised at how early it is still, but skeptically thankful things are going well so far. Jenson was still getting over having ear infections, so he was a pretty miserable kid the day before – which made us miserable – and I was worried that some of that would carry over to today.
9:25 a.m. – Marlowe starts to fall asleep so I swaddle her and put her in the bouncer while I do puzzles with Jenson. He can actually do them all by himself, but he needs some guidance when he gets frustrated with pieces. And it was my job to “please stack them”. He starts to get fussy and I can tell he’s still not feeling well so I give him some Motrin. The Dr. said to keep giving him Motrin if he’s whining more than usual, since his ear still looked bad the day before. I finish up the dishes I didn’t get to earlier and then change his diaper.
10:15 a.m. – Marlowe wakes and put her on her playmat while I read to Jenson on the floor. She does a little tummy time. Does the guy in the book “Seriously, You Have to Eat” below remind you of anyone? Walter White, anyone?! I just looked it up and Bryan Cranston does a narration of the profane version of the book “You have to F’in Eat“, so I think it’s actually supposed to be him.
Marlowe doesn’t really ever get to lay on the mat by herself…Jenson always joins her.
10:45 a.m. – Change Marlowe’s diaper, feed her, and then change her again since she pooped while I was feeding her. Jenson puts my nursing pad down his shirt…
11:05 a.m. – Jenson starts crying for a snack so I put Marlowe in the Baby K’tan. He wants some freeze-dried fruit snacks, so I give him a small bowl of them at the table.
She’s wide awake and pushes away from me so she can look around for awhile. I melt some cheese on some gluten-free crackers for myself and he asks for some, so I make some for him. It’s not that easy to cut cheese with a knife while supporting her head with one hand since she’s still pushing away and trying to look around at everything.
Eventually she falls asleep. He seems willing to keep eating, so I decide that it’s actually lunch and put him in his seat (surprised he doesn’t resist). He eats almost a whole apple and a big bowl of “pink” yogurt. He normally eats plain greek yogurt, but if he had fruit yogurt recently (he was eating it while Max was here), he asks for pink yogurt for the next couple of times. I didn’t have any more flavored yogurt, so I stirred a tiny bit of jelly into the yogurt for him until it’s just barely pink, and he was happy with that. He dropped one of his spoons and I tried to just give him another, but he wanted the other one (“have it!”), so I washed it and he ended up with 2 spoons. When he was done, he played with his spoons for a bit in his chair while I straightened up in the kitchen. I don’t even know what he was doing, but he was happy, so I was happy.
12:00 p.m. – Finish puzzles – in all, we do about 10 puzzles, and I’m glad he forgot there were 6 or so more puzzles on the other side of the room.
Change both diapers. Marlowe starts to get really fussy (hungry), but Jenson is ready/willing to take a nap and I don’t want to miss that window, so we all go upstairs for his nap routine. I read his 3 books on the spare bed in his room and try to hold off Marlowe with the pacifier. She’s starts to really fuss and I know I can’t hold her off any longer so I tell Jenson I need to feed Marlowe while I sing to him. I expected quite a fuss about it since it’s not his routine of me (or Lo) rocking him while we sing our songs, but surprisingly, he decides that he can rock himself and I can nurse Marlowe on the bed while singing. I sing our three typical songs: “Daddy” which is actually “I will take you home” by the Grateful Dead – random, but I sang it to him a long time ago and he loved it and calls it “Daddy” because it says the word daddy in it a few times; and the second song is Levon – during which he started saying the last word of each line with me – which made me laugh (he actually knows most of the words). The third song used to be one of 2 Dixie Chicks songs (Traveling Soldier or Godspeed), but since Lo put him to bed and nap for a few weeks, he now he prefers “Sunshine” – “You are my sunshine”, but with a bonus verse where we name the people we love (our families) – “I love you Jenson, I love you Marlowe, I love you Daddy, and Boofy too, I love you gramma, I love you Pappap, I love you Nana and Papaw too” (and through the rest of the family). Then he says “all done” and I put him in the crib. I laid Marlowe down while I put Jenson in the crib. He fussed about me leaving, so I told him he could have 3 animal crackers after nap – which are a total treat to him. I was desperate though because I needed to finish feeding Marlowe and I didn’t want him to keep fussing. It worked.
12:45 p.m. – Finish feeding Marlowe and put her in the swing asleep by 1:15. Change my shirt and put on deodorant finally. Season and put a turkey breast in the slow cooker for dinner. Finish and schedule the “Surviving” post to publish.
2:30 p.m. – Jenson wakes up and isn’t in a great mood (which is typical unless it’s a super-long nap). Changed his diaper, despite his protests. He doesn’t want to play or do anything, so he sits on my lap while I edit some photos on the laptop. He’s still pretty fussy and asks for his animal crackers so we go in the kitchen for them.
3:30 p.m. – Marlowe wakes up – long nap for her – and just as I’m getting her out of the swing, Jenson gets on the bottom step, and when he turns around he loses his balance and starts to fall backwards. I saw it all happening and was only about 5 steps away, but I had just picked her up and couldn’t get to him in time to catch him. Luckily he only fell from one step up and landed on his butt first, but he couldn’t hold his giant toddler head up, so he fell back and hit his head – luckily (again) on the rug. I put Marlowe back in the swing and comfort him for a few minutes. Changed her diaper and fed her on the couch while I read Jenson more books. He asks to hold Marlowe – he loves holding her and is very careful with her. When he’s done, he says “please take her back”.
He perked up and started playing. He even played by himself for a bit while I held Marlowe on the couch. I tried to put a sweater and hat that my mom made on her for some pictures, but she wasn’t into it and started fussing.
5 p.m. – Jenson wanted to go down to our room, so we play on the bed and Marlowe does some tummy time – its too difficult on the memory foam bed, so I pick her up and shes falls asleep right away.
When Lo gets home a few minutes later, Jenson opens a package that came in the mail for me from Amazon. It’s animal bath toys that my sister Summer sent for Jenson. Max has the same ones and loves them, so she thought Jenson would like them. He loves them and immediately wants to take a bath, so we just go with it. Lo gets him in the bath and Marlowe was dozing so I put her in the bouncer but she wakes. I try to feed her but she’s not interested.
5:50 p.m. – Lo takes Marlowe after Jenson’s bath and I start Au Gratin potatoes and cauliflower to go with the turkey breast. I just mixed the frozen cauliflower in with the potatoes once they were mostly cooked. Do a load of laundry because I constantly need clean nursing pads…I’m having a bit of a leaking issue.
6:20 p.m. – Eat dinner. Jenson still doesn’t eat meat (or most things) so he has grilled cheese leftover from the day before. I offer him an augratin potato and he really likes it and eats a bunch more – even some of the cauliflower pieces. After that he wants a kiwi, so I peel and cut one up for him and then take Marlowe so Lo can eat.
7:00 p.m. – Done with dinner and we all go in the living room and hang out, play, and read for a bit, while Jenson keeps telling us “no go night night”. He got his antibiotic, motrin, and brushed his teeth. I stopped jotting down the events for the evening, so the rest if off of memory…
7:45 p.m. – Time for Jenson to go upstairs for bedtime routine, which is basically the same at naptime routine – the 3 books, 3 songs. Lo has been taking him up at night usually (seems fair if I have to do the routine and read the same 3 books for nap), but he’s holding Marlowe and I was already on the floor with Jenson, so I took him instead. I know there was some sort of hiccup with bedtime that night, but I can’t remember which it was – I had a hiccup each time I put him to bed this week, so they’re all mixed up. It was either that I forgot to turn on the fan and then he was distraught about the nightlight, or I wouldn’t let him throw the books on the floor and he was distraught about that. Either way, he fussed once he was in the crib and Lo had to go up and convince him to go to sleep.
8:30 p.m. – I didn’t notice exactly when he feel asleep, but he was asleep by 8:30. I feed Marlowe and we spend the rest of the evening on the couch watching tv and/or on the computer.
10 p.m. – I top her off and Lo takes her to our room to go to sleep, and she falls asleep pretty quickly. At 10:30 p.m., Lo comes out to make sure I’m not staying up all night, but I was already shutting down the computer and getting my stuff together for bed.
I was pretty tired, but surprised I wasn’t more tired after the first day alone with the two of them. The day went really well, and honestly, I was surprised. There was definitely some juggling of the kids – trying to pacify one of the them while dealing with the other, etc., but it wasn’t bad. It’s so different than when I was home with just Jenson though – I was able to give him my full attention, and when he was playing by himself, I had free time. I think he’s handling not having my full attention pretty well. Sometimes he asks me to put her down when he wants me to focus on him, and as long as it’s feasible, I do. It’s a big adjustment for him and I want to make it as easy as possible so he doesn’t resent Marlowe for stealing my attention. As he gets older (and as Marlowe become more needy), he going to be even more independent, so I think we’ll be just fine.