Naptime Blog

When you have little children, it becomes an absolute necessity to have a daily routine…  and when that routine gets interrupted, it can be a nightmare.

How do you handle when the daily routine is interrupted?

With four children, three babies, we have a daily routine.  The kids get up at seven, the boys each get their milk.  I take my shower and get dressed while Paul takes care of them.  He leaves for work at 7:30.  Then the kids play a bit, and have breakfast at about ten.  The boys take their naps (usually) at about 10:30, and during the summer months Juliana plays or reads, or gets a chance to watch her shows while they nap.  I get my work done in these morning hours.

When the kids get up, we take baths and get dressed.  They watch a little TV and play a bit while I finish my work.  I like to wait until about 2pm, when the sun is gone from the yard, and we go outside.  The kids play in the kiddie pool or their slide, or they play trucks.  Juliana loves to play with her brothers, and she runs around and enjoys herself with the boys.

By about 4:30pm, we go back inside, and my mother comes to help me with the kids while I prepare dinner and finish up any laundry or cleaning I need to get finished.  Paul gets home at 5:30, we have dinner about 6, then the kids play a bit while we clean up dinner and finish up any chores we need to do.  At 8ish, we begin the night routine, get the kids ready for bed, give them their milk, and the boys are in their cribs at about 8:30.  Juliana gets to stay up until 10 on non-school nights (9 on school nights).  Paul goes to get our Dunkin Donuts iced coffees, and we sit in the living room and get some time for each other.  He usually checks his email while I do some more work, then we try to watch a little TV together for a bit before we go to bed. 

And then it starts all over again the next day.  But it is our routine, it works for us, and we enjoy it.  Weekends are different, as we have plans and parties and other things going on.  It all works for us.

We are spending the week on vacation with my family.  Seventeen of us in a huge beach house…  And of course because everyone has their own routines, my kids routines are disrupted…  My kids want to go with everyone else, they want to play, they want to be with the adults…  and it gets chaotic.  So we need to adjust to the change and deal with the different personalities and routines…  But it isn’t easy.  I just have to keep reminding myself that we are all on vacation to enjoy the beach and each other, and the week will fly by… We really are enjoying each other.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 7:40 am and is filed under Jennifer, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.