Schedules: Part 1

The key to managing two children under two, I read somewhere, is being organized. I must schedule our days' activities. I have a problem with this. I am an impromptu person, adverse to schedules. I'm not a 9-to-5, two-weeks-vacation kind of person. I do things differently, a recent psychological test told me. I USED TO BE ORGANIZED, somewhere in the far reaches of my pre-Mom Again days. I used to be a project manager. So, if I can just take that kind of approach to scheduling daily, weekly, and monthly activities for two children under two--. Forget it.

My problem with scheduling is that so many things get in the way of plans I have made. Someone will return a call, a person I really need to talk to about Something--and there goes my reading time in the morning with the children. An Appointment I made at what seemed to be a convenient time when I made it suddenly looms, leaving me scrambling and stealing time I had planned for something else. Just when I've been lulled into believing the children will sleep for a good hour (my Golden Hour) around this time, 12:00-12:30, one of them decides to stay up and scream his/her head off until I accept that he/she is not going to nap, no matter how little I promise it has to be. The other stealer of planned time is exhaustion. Sometimes I just don't have the energy to keep up with my demands.

But if I'm going to be the best grandmom/mom I can be, I will have to try. So, here is my first attempt at making and following a daily schedule.

Wake up: 8:00-9:00: This is optimistic. Most of the time I'm up before this, and for a spell there, Raine would sleep until 9:30 or even 10:00 if I let her (which I would sometimes do, just for the rare pleasure of having some one-on-one with Sun). Still, nowadays, we're mostly up by 9:00.

8:30-9:30: Morning meal: First there are the sippy cups of Pediasure. In Raine's case, this is still a bottle, but that will soon end, and she'll be taking this wake-up cocktail in a cup like her big brother. Somewhere between 9:30 and 10:30, I give them something more--oatmeal, scrambled eggs, fruit, etc.--which Sun will sometimes eat and most times not. Raine, on the other hand, would stuff everything into her mouth with her hands if I let her.

9:30-10:30: Bath or wash-up, diapers, clothes. I'm not a morning person, and I usually stay up late working or writing, so I admit, sometimes I don't change their clothes until the afternoon. I DO CHANGE THE DIAPERS, people. But sometimes they stay in their pajamas until after their nap. And I stay in mine. We clean up nicely, though.

I'm potty training Sun, and he is resisting, so sometimes we have to wait for his potty sitting (productive or unproductive) to end before he gets into fresh clothes. So, this part of the schedule is a crap shoot at best, no pun

1:30: Okay, it's a good hour since I stopped the paragraph above mid-sentence. Sun, who according to the Schedule is supposed to be asleep anyway, comes up to me with his hand smeared in poop. He smears some on me and I rush him to the bathtub where we clean up and then I have to trace his travels through the house to see if he left poop anywhere else. And now that I'm back trying to schedule the rest of the day, Raine is awake and crying , and no doubt must be changed as well.

So much for having time to keep a blog. So much for scheduling...