Well, by the end of the week we’ll have a 9-month old, but last Monday I took notes for this post aaand I’m just getting it posted because, well, you’ll see. C is busy – playing with her toys, the dogs’ toys, the remotes, crawling into corners, pulling herself up on every piece of furniture she can reach, practicing walking, and more – and she usually likes to have me within eyeshot and often prefers I’m not doing anything else while she’s being busy.
5:20am – I wake up. C was up at 11:20 last night. Jack tried to get her back down, but she needed more milk than was left in the bottle I gave her at bedtime and we do not have an abundant freezer stash at the moment. She slept the rest of the night, though! I brush my teeth and put my contacts in.
5:32am – I get downstairs, top off my water and grab a snack, and set up to pump.
5:43am – C cries. I give it 30 seconds because she sleeps very restlessly at this point in the morning, but she’s actually awake, so I go feed her and settle her back to sleep.
5:50am – I put her back down, keep pumping, read, write, and drink my coffee. It’s probably not how I’d start my day if I didn’t have to pump – I prefer working out first thing – but it sort of eases me into the day anyway.
6:50am – Turn the monitor up a little and put it by Jack, and then I go work out (an easy 20-minute Peloton scenic ride while I listen to Econtalk on effective altruism) and shower.
7:30am – C is up for the day. Jack changes her and plays with her till it’s time for him to get ready for work.
7:55am – I come downstairs and feed the dogs and let them out back. And then I make myself toast absolutely piled with peanut butter and a bowl of cottage cheese with a banana.
8:07am – I take over with C and Jack goes to shower. C mostly plays independently, occasionally looking to me for engagement.
8:30am – C is getting a little crabby, and it’s been a while since she’s eaten. I nurse her and then we cuddle on the couch for a little bit, playing This Little Piggy and singing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. She’s not much of a cuddler because she likes to be go-go-going all the time, but she has been giving me a few minutes after naps and nursing lately and I love it. And then she crawls away, onto the next thing.
8:55am – This morning, the next thing is peekaboo. She sprint-crawled away from me down the hall and started playing peekaboo with me from behind the banister. Jack comes downstairs while we’re playing. C then insists we watch him gather coffee and breakfast, and then I can tell she’s getting a little tired. We go upstairs and I wrestle her into warmer clothes since it’s a little chilly out in the mornings these days.
9:37am – C and I go for a walk.
This has been the best pre-nap routine since we moved. Not because it magically gives us great naps (it doesn’t), but because C likes walks, so it extends the amount of happy awake time she has and it kind of gives me a break before I go put her down.
10:02am – We come inside and play for a bit before it’s time to head upstairs for her nap.
10:15am – C and I visit Jack so she can get a hug and a kiss before naptime, and then we go up to her room. I zip her into a sleep sack and we read Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs and The ABCs of Love. C melts down as soon as I’m done reading. I nurse her to sleep.
10:44am – I put her down, and then come downstairs and drink a ton of water. I tell myself I can sit and chill for the first half hour of her nap.
11:20am – A few minutes late from my self-imposed deadline, I get up to go dry my hair.
11:22am – C cries, so I go sit with her and nurse her back to sleep instead.
11:45am – I put her back down, and then slip off to my room to dry and straighten my hair.
11:57am – C’s up. We snuggle and play in her room for a couple minutes, and then go touch up my hair. I head up chicken tortilla soup for lunch.
12:20pm – Eat lunch. C gets super messy. I clean up her body and she crawls away to play happily, so I go clean the kitchen and let her hang out in a messy shirt for a bit.
12:50pm – Go change her into a clean shirt. She hates this, but we eventually get there.
1:07pm – Leave for Target. We pick up Ben’s food and other assorted stuff.
1:50pm – We’re back from Target. I let C crawl around a little to stretch out, we practice walking together, and then I take her for a quick walk before her next nap.
2:45pm – We get back from our walk and go upstairs to get her ready for her nap. She throws her hands overhead to get me to tell her that she’s “soooo biiiiig.” (This is one of her favorite things right now and she does it at least 20 times a day, usually accompanied by a big toothy smile.)
I read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and then nurse her to sleep.
3:20pm – She’s down for her nap. I eat a bowl of cereal and then prep a double batch of Italian beef for dinner and to have on hand the rest of the week.
3:50pm – C is up. I go try to cuddle her back to sleep but she’s not having it. We play in her room for a bit and then I go downstairs to finish up dinner prep. She’s also not really having that, so I start the beef cooking and then we go into the living room to play. She repeatedly crawls toward Jack’s office. I remove her over and over, finally entice her into a game of peekaboo, and then vacuum when peekaboo stops working. She follows me around while I do that and then is magically happy to go hang out in the play room while I start cutting up broccoli for dinner.
4:49pm – I nurse her and then we cuddle and sing The Grand Old Duke of York a few times. She loves it.
5:01pm – Jack is done working and comes out to join our singalong before he goes downstairs to work out.
5:12pm – I put C in her high chair with a breast milk popsicle and a wet paper towel to chew on. The kid likes what she likes. That lets me cook the broccoli and start roasting the potatoes for dinner. Then, she gets fed up with being trapped in the high chair. I take her out and she and plays happily in the playroom while I start cleaning up the kitchen and prep coffee for tomorrow.
5:45pm – Jack is done working out and takes C off my hands so I can finish up dinner. They feed the dogs. I gather up trash and take the cans out to the curb.
6:16pm – We sit down to eat. It’s fun, and C makes a giant mess.
6:55pm – Jack gives C a bath and gets her ready for bed. I clean the kitchen and reset downstairs for the next day. I also thaw a bag of milk to make C a bottle. She almost always takes 4 or 5 extra ounces at bedtime. Girl likes to backload her calories.
7:23pm – I head up to put C to bed. We read Time for Bed and You’re My Little Cuddle Bug, and then I turn on Taylor Swift, nurse her, and then give her the bottle to go to sleep. She leaves a couple ounces in the bottle. I put her down at 7:54.
8:02pm – I have changed into pajamas and just gotten out the ice cream I intend to eat as a bedtime snack, and C is mad. I go back upstairs to give her the last couple ounces from the bottle and soothe her to sleep. And then I go back downstairs and eat the rest of the pint of ice cream I didn’t finish yesterday. (I do not have the self-restraint to only eat part of a pint of ice cream a lot of the time. However, I had already eaten an entire pint earlier yesterday. Two pints in a day felt like probably too much. But yeah, breastfeeding and following/carrying around an active baby is no joke.)
8:57pm – I head up to get ready for bed.
9:12pm – I’m in bed. I read for about 2 minutes and pass out.
10:50pm – Jack wakes me up because C is mad and not calming down for him, which makes sense because there was no milk left in the bottle from earlier. I go love on her and nurse her back to sleep.
11:02pm – C is down again. She slept the rest of the night after that.
