My Average Day with the two kids

It’s nap time so I got time to write…..

The three year old sleeps in a ‘big boy bed’, (aka a toddler bed), which means he can get out of bed at any time. The 20 month girl has to scream from her crib to be saved when she’s awake….. But since the house is quiet, and fairly clean, I can write….

Here’s how my day goes.

7am - The kids wake up, right as my wife is leaving for work. With a little luck, she can say goodbye to them on her way out. I get the kids out of bed, do diaper changes for both, get them sippy cups of milk and turn on the DORA THE EXPLORER. Don’t knock TV, it gives me time to use the bathroom, make coffee, and grab the paper.

By 8am, the day is in full swing. I need to get the kids dressed, and feed them breakfast because our daily adventure (different on each day of the week) begin at 9am. Unfortunately I don’t really get time to shower, and if I do, it’s a quick one with the door open where I listen for the kids stealing the plunger near the toilet. Breakfast is an ordeal, and I’ll save that for another post….

9am – Monday thru Wednesday my three year old has nursery school from 9-1130am. I walk the three blocks with him (the youngest tagging along). I wait outside the door with all the other nannies, mostly African American and West Indies, and help him with his jacket and Spiderman backpack. Once he’s good, the youngest and I are free to have mini adventures for a few hours. Sometimes we run errands, sometimes we go to the Children’s Museum or Manhattan, and other times we go play on the swings in the park. Lately I have organized play dates for her and other kids in the neighborhood. The nannies come to our house and play with my little girl for an hour or two. I spend most of my time silently comparing her development to the other kids her age. I have tried to have conversations with the nannies, but it’s nothing compared to the watercooler talk I had in my professional world before I was laid off.

11:30am – 12:30pm Playdate activities over, I head to school to pick up the boy, always checking his mailbox to take home his latest painted ‘masterpiece’. We come home and I go into full lunch mode. From grilled cheese, to PB&J, mac and cheese, etc.. I make lunch time the kids food meal, and dinner the healthier meal. Lunch is an ordeal, and I’ll save that for another post…

1pm – I try to gauge how tired the kids seem. As much as I would like for them both to go down for a nap right at 1pm, it takes about an hour of wind down before I can officially say both are napping. There are diaper changes, story time, songs, etc… It’s a full blown day care in my place, and I’m the daddy day care scout leader.

2-3pm – I can safely say that this hour is for myself. I can check my email, make phone calls, even write a blog. I wish I could nap at this time. I need to take a nap at this time from the go-go-go seven hours I just had, but I can really ever go down. I usually catch up on my TIVO and give my wife an update on the kid’s day so far. Some times I pay bills. Sometimes I clean the house.

Now my kids wake up in the morning feeling refreshed, but they both wake up from nap time at 3pm clingy and cranky. It can 20 minutes to get them to feel awake again. I’m either just holding them, getting a graham cracker snack, or just dealing with meltdowns. Sometimes a combination of those at the same time.

3pm-5pm is improve time. There’s no adventures to have at parks, schools or museums, no play dates. It’s just play by ear time. We play toys or I put them in the double stroller and go grocery shopping, the drug store, or just stay at home and play with toys. It’s the time of day where I look at my watch the most because the day seems to move the slowest. I’m waiting for 5pm to get them dinner, they’re touching everything, breaking everything, and destroying the house I just cleaned up when they were napping. I fight the urge not to turn on the TV and veg out while they watch repeats of Sesame Street and Yo Gabba Gabba. (By the way, have you seen Yo Gabba Gabba? That’s for another post…)

5pm – I try to make a healthy dinner. No ‘lunch time foods’ like applesauce and jello. Vegetables, corn, chicken, fish, etc… My oldest is a very picky eater and doesn’t like to try new things. You guessed it, it’s an ordeal.

6pm – The best part of my day…. BATHTIME!! I suppose I don’t have to bath them every night, but they love it, and I love it. They both get into the bubble bath and we play with bathtoys and waterbuckets. They take turns picking their ELMO COLOR, that is, what color we are going to turn the bath water using these colored dye pucks dropped into the tub. Their favorite color is all of them… (aka brown). I try to make bathtime last at least a half an hour, then dry them off and get them ready for bed.

6:30-7:30pm – TV TIME!! My second favorite part of the day. They get 45 minutes of TV of their choice, including DVDs! We’ve watched every Disney movie 50 times, commercials and all. Our current nightly favorite is SNOW WHITE. They dance when Snow White dances with the dwarfs, and they pretend to be the magic mirror. More about this hour on another post!

7:30pm If I’m lucky, my wife will come home right as TV time ends and bed time begins. She’ll spend time with them and we’ll each put one of them down. If she’s not home, which is 3 of the 5 days a week, then I have to pull a carefully orchestrated maneuver off. I have to keep the oldest one occupied while I give the one-year old rocking chair time, and then I have to hope the baby stays down while I read stories and sing songs with the older one. This entire process takes about an hour. I wont bore you with the details of stories and songs, however let’s just say there is some amazing throwbacks to my favorite movies and TV shows of the 70’s. The stories, the songs, it’s my most creative time of the day.

8:30pm – My wife is usually home and we discuss dinner. We order in, since the kids are down and it’s too late to start cooking. We both are sound asleep by 10pm, barring a child not waking up, which happens frequently. But I’ll save that for another post….