Schedule

I’ve been getting our tax information together for our accountant and I’m feeling extremely left-brained and uncreative. I’ve got nothing cute to say, so I thought I’d share our weekday schedule. I’m still working on the activities but this is the flow we’re in now.

6:30-7:15AM: Get up, shower, get dressed, make breakfast for the babies, make myself a cup of hot tea and a bowl of cheerios.

7:15/7:30-8: Get the girls up, change diapers, herd them to the kitchen and serve them breakfast. Getting them to breakfast is easy – they know the routine and practically run to the kitchen as soon as I open the door to the nursery to let them out. It's always the same thing: A sliced boiled egg, half a banana, and cheerios or hot cereal, with a cup of milk or diluted apple juice. Occasionally I go crazy and throw in a mini whole wheat bagel. They inhale breakfast.

8-9: Showtime for Twin Momma! We go to the playroom and I sing songs from the public library’s “Books and Babies Storytime.” When I get out the little handout of songs the librarian gave us, Turtle immediately sits down in front of me, ready to go.

After about ten minutes of singing in English and Spanish, I move on to books. One of my favorites is “My Little Word Book,” a large board book filled with photos and words for building vocabulary. We go page by page talking about every picture. When we get to the “In the Home” page we look at the clock in the book and then find the clock in the room. When we get to the “On the Farm” page we sing Old MacDonald and use the animals pictured to fill out the song. This can last as long as 20 minutes, and the girls look at the pictures in that book all day long. This evening Turtle lugged the book all the way to the kitchen where the cat was eating, pointed to the cat, and then pointed to the cat in the book. She’s brilliant.

Next, it’s time to “play stickers.” I give the girls pages of those little round dot stickers you use for garage sales and they peel them off the page and stick them into a giant coloring book. I tried crayons and various other kinds of coloring things for “Art Time” but Monkey still wants to eat everything and Turtle is very messy with a short attention span, so we're sticking with the stickers. They love to peel them and stick them all over the place, and they are super easy to clean up, so it works for everyone. Stickers last another 10 minutes or so – sometimes much longer for Monkey - and then we “free play” with some of their 8 gajillion toys.

9AM: YES, it really is only 9AM at this point. Sigh.

9:15AM: Snack time! I usually chop some fruit, maybe with cottage cheese and/or a piece of toast. Then it’s time to get the girls dressed for the day and head out to any activity we have planned.

9:45-11AM: Monday I took the girls out for a haircut, Tuesday we had a playdate with M. and M. in South Austin, Wednesday we had Storytime at the library. I am working hard to avoid store errands with the girls and have been fairly successful for the past three weeks. I don’t want to raise a couple of hyper-consumers and I’m pretty sure taking them to Target three times a week was sending the wrong message! So I do my store errands after they go to bed or on the weekends now. I know eventually they will be corrupted, but while they are very small and under my complete control I’m trying to enforce my “No TV, No sweets, No shopping” mantra.

11:15-11:30: Lunchtime! Depending on what they had for their snack, we’ll have yogurt with a waffle, or diced turkey breast with peas and toast, or something like that.

11:45-1:45ish: NAP. Oh sweet Jesus it’s naptime. I take a twenty minute break to eat, then I clean up the kitchen from breakfast, snack and lunch, get a crock pot meal going if that’s the dinner plan, and then figure out which of the 25 things on my “to list” are the most pressing to take care of.

1:45-2:30ish: Girls wake up, get fresh diapers, play in the playroom until snack time.

2:30-3: Snack Time. I decide what to give them based on what and how they’ve eaten so far that day. Tuesday they had grapes and cheese, mmm, their favorite. There’s never a drop of food thrown on the ground on grapes and cheese day.

3-5: Activity time. On Wednesdays and Fridays my neighborhood playgroup meets at the playground at 3:30; on Thursdays we have a Mommy and Me Spanish class at 3:30. This past Tuesday we had a playdate with E. and L. at our house. I have to be careful about balancing our time out of the house because (a) they (especially Monkey) gets extremely cranky if we have to drive somewhere twice in the same day and (b) Twin Momma gets worn out from hauling girls, making snacks for the road, and thinking ten steps ahead to plan an outing.

5-5:30: Dinner time (for the girls - N and I wait to eat until after they go to bed). Most days they have something like tofu with broccoli or pasta with mixed vegetables, heavy on the green beans. You may not think organic whole grain spirals with ground flaxseed sounds good, but Turtle shovels it in by the fistful. I mix it up with the occasional cheese quesadilla but generally they just like to inhale as many green beans as possible and call it a night. As dinner winds down I start counting the seconds until N gets home, around 5:49PM most days. If he’s not home by 5:55PM I start to hyperventilate.

5:50-6:50: DADDY PLAY TIME! This is a wonderfully unstructured time, with lots of dance parties, and tickling, and chasing, and shrieks of baby laughter filling the house. I can finally relax and just play, and I generally model whatever N is doing because he’s got all the energy and the fun. The girls kind of look at me weird when I copy N doing something silly, though. It’s like they’re saying, “It’s only funny when Daddy does it, Mommy. You just look dumb.”

6:50-7:20: Bath and Bedtime. Whew.

7:25: Collapse on the couch for 2 minutes before starting dinner and taking care of household management and preparing for the next day.

10PM: Twin Momma Bedtime!! Decide which of the six books on my nightstand I'll read that night and read for ten minutes before passing out.

It's a whirlwind, but I love it.