A Day in the Life with Four Kids

Note: all times are approximate and only in a very vague way represents a "typical" day...

10:00pm - 4:30am Not even going to guess how many times I was up to nurse or put another baby back to bed...

5:00am (ish) Notice Lucas getting into our bed and falling asleep. Take Lisa back to her crib.
5:50 Leila up to nurse, doesn't go back to sleep.
6:10 Take Leila to bathroom in her rocking chair so mommy can have a shower.
6:20 Shower done, Lucas is up. Go to get changed and find Lisa awake as well.
6:30 Everyone in the living room except for Elena (still sleeping) Nurse Lisa.
6:45 Elena gets up. Change twins diapers, clean up kitchen and start getting breakfast ready. Fruit and juice for Lucas, banana and granola with milk for Elena and mommy.
7:00 Lie babies down in their pack n play with bottles of milk, while we eat breakfast.
7:15 Make oatmeal with apples and cinnamon for the twins breakfast.
7:30 Dressing older kids for school and feeding babies.
7:45 Getting everyone cleaned up, shoes on, hair done and into the car.
8:00 Leave for school.
8:15 Return home with twins. Leila fell asleep in the car, Lisa follows about 10 minutes later.
8:30-10:00 Mommy cleans up the house, does dishes and has second breakfast (finally, a cup of tea!), while babies nap.
10:15 Lisa is up from her unusually long nap. Leila follows about 15 minutes later.
10:30 Nurse Lisa and then Leila.
11:00 Wash dishes and prepare lunch for babies.
11:30 Lunch for babies - rice, carrots, broccoli and beans. Fruit for dessert.
12:00 Bath time for twins. It's much easier to give them a bath in the morning when the older kids are at school!
12:20 Bottles for babies
12:30 Play time
1:00 Lisa goes down for a nap, Leila is tired, but resists.
1:00-1:30 Alternate between eating lunch and trying to put Leila down for her nap.

doesn't she look tired?

1:30 Try lying down with Leila to rest a bit. Doesn't work.
1:50 Give up with the napping and buckle Leila into the car seat to go pick up the kids from school. One minute in the car and Leila is sleeping. Lisa stays (sleeping) at home with daddy.
2:10 Return with kids.
2:15 Leave big kids with daddy and buckle Lisa into her seat to go to the doctor.
2:30 Leave for doctors appointment. Spend ten minutes driving around the office trying to find parking. Nurse Lisa while we wait to see the dr.
3:45 Finish at doctors (routine check up) and head to the pharmacy to pick up a few things.
4:15 Home again, nurse Leila.
4:30 Wake Elena from her nap.
5:20 Whip up some supper for the twins.
5:30 Supper for the twins and making supper for the rest of us. Elena helps to feed the twins as I run back and forth between them and the stove.
6:15 Supper - whole family at the table, twins having their fruit dessert.
6:30-7:00 Kids watch one of their favorite TV shows, Jelly Jamm.
7:00-7:45 Big kids have baths with daddy, mommy gets twins changed and ready for bed, nurses Leila and then Lisa, dressing the big kids in between.
7:45 Daddy takes the big kids to bed, mommy finishes getting twins to bed, one more bottle and some medicine for Lisa.
8:15 Twins are out.
8:40 Big kids are out.
8:45 - 11:00 Mommy enjoys a cup of tea, conversation with hubby and a TV show before hitting the sack (a little later than usual - and it caught up with her when all the kids woke up before six the next day!)

If you made it all the way through that, congratulations! Today is shaping up to be pretty similar - at least until 10:30am - twins are waking up from their nap now. Onward and upward we go! Have a great day, readers!

Smooth Sailing

These days don't come around all that often, so I'm going to take this opportunity to write it down for posterity! We had a wonderful day yesterday. Nothing special happened, it was a normal school day for the kids, but for some reason, it was just smooth sailing all the way to bedtime. 

Part of it might be the fact that the kids actually slept in a little, only waking up just before 7. Usually it's sometime between 6 - 6:30.

Once they got home from school they enjoyed their usual little snack and a 10 minute TV show before heading to their room to read a few books and lie down for their nap. I just love it when I can feel Elena falling asleep on my lap as I read to them, her little head just gets heavier and starts to flop to one side, and her breathing becomes so slow and deep. They're both getting so big it's hard for us all to fit in one chair, but we'll keep it up as long as we can. 

Maybe it was the fact that I had done a lot of meal prep in the morning which meant I didn't really have much to do to prepare dinner.

After naps and another snack, I found the kids had hidden themselves in our bedroom. They aren't usually allowed to play in there, but today Lucas wanted to make a tent. So I got out a clean sheet, some clothes-pins, a random piece of wooden dowel that was lying around and made us a big tent. We probably spent at least an hour playing in there and reading books. Just awesome.

It's nice when the kids find something that they can do together that doesn't involve fighting and stealing toys from each other. 

Of course, we also had to turn off all the lights and get the flashlight out for a bit.

After we had exhausted the tent, the kids ran around outside while I finished making supper, then it was bath time and bed. The kids were nice, kind, gentle and most of all, pretty obedient!

Hoping for lots more days like this!

Saturday Morning

My kids have gotten into a nice weekday routine now that we've finally kicked the colds (mostly) and they are back to school every day. Namely, they both still go down for a nice nap after getting home from school, having a small snack and reading a few books in their (darkened) room.

Unfortunately, over the last few weekends, I have discovered that they don't get as tired out at home, and we are staring to have a weekly Saturday nap battle. And everyone knows, this momma NEEDS nap time for her sanity. It's just a must.

So I am starting to make sure the kids have lots of energetic activities to do on Saturday morning, hopefully enforcing a no-war zone around nap time. 

Today we have played a lot of cars, had a dance party and created an obstacle course. Now that Lucas is getting older and more into building things, it's a lot of fun for him. We just pulled out our two collapsible tunnels and used what we have in our living/dining room. Go through the tunnel, climb over the chair, go around the table, climb over some more chairs, jump over a few things and presto! They ran around for a good 10 minutes, then spent at least 15 more minutes rearranging and doing it all over again! Lots of cheering and high fives from mommy and hopefully some tired out kids.

We also used an old packing box to make an impromptu slide.

I'll let you know how nap time goes today!

Update: After lunch, a short tv show (10 minutes) and ONE BOOK, Elena was out. Lucas read one more book with me and laid down, pulled up his blanket and went straight to sleep. Happy Mommy here.