Like lighting, this week went by with a quickness and surprisingly little insanity. I seem to be getting the hang of wrangling two small children by myself.
I’ve mastered the art of getting two children prepped and out of the house by a specific time. LifeTime requires that parents of children under 1 year schedule an appointment to ensure that they have the appropriate staff on hand. This means that I have to be able to predict when naps will have been taken, snacks been eaten, and afternoon poopings completed. And while this is relatively easy to do with adults, children seem deadset on being spontaneous.
But we’ve managed to get into a semi-solid routine, and I’ve been able to make 2:30pm a standing appointment for the last couple of weeks. A 2:30 appt requires a 2pm departure time. Shooting for 2pm departure ensures that we have enough of a cushion to allow for last minute diaper changes and infant top-offs, and still have enough time to let Thessaly walk from the car, through the facility and to the childcare place. She seems to enjoy this quite a bit. It also reduces the screaming fits when I leave her there.
Time spent being screamed at by two children at once has been reduced. I’ve learned to anticipate when Torbin will be hungry so that I’m not being hollered at while milk is warming. We’ve started Thessaly eating with a spoon, which she enjoys greatly, and it has the added benefit of keeping her occupied for longer in the highchair. A bowl of Life cereal will keep her occupied for a good 10 minutes or so and so this has become her new first breakfast.
The next challenge is going to be incorporating some sorely needed housekeeping tasks. At this point, it’s all I can do to survive the day. But I feel like I’ve rounded a corner, established a fairly predictable routine, and now I can start to work in other items like sweeping the floor between meals, straightening up the living room, vacuuming, taking out trash, getting the recycling prepped and out of the way.
Not much of this has been happening regularly enough, and it causes a bit of tension in the house when the two adults are exhausted after a long day and hip deep in the toys strewn about the living room.
### Fridge Update
I have been notified by Warners’ Stellian that the ETA for the replacement parts is today! We’ll see if that’s going to actually translate to a fixed refrigerator this week.
Want to read about my bad experience with Warners’ Stellian and their extended warranty from the start? I’ve created a new category here at the Q-Blog that contains all posts that touch on the subject of my powerfully bad experience with Warners’ Stellian.
[Check it out.](http://q-burger.com/category/blog/bad-warners-stellian/)
Enjoy the routine while you can…because the kids are sure to throw a monkey wrench into it sooner or later.
I hope you had some wood nearby to knock on when you said this!
I fear the whole ‘getting 2 kids out of the house on time’ thing – Eek!
Good luck with the refrigerator! I’m sure that will help your sanity immensely.
As a fellow two-kids-SAHP, I have to say, “Well done!” Finding / making / anticipating a routine can be challenge, but well worth it in the end.
I found that making it a priority to get the one room I want to relax in tidied at the end of every day worked well – that way I could just sit back and go “whew!” and ignore the rest of the mess if I needed to. Also, once I got ahead of the mess in that one room, I could make forays into the other ones. shrug Worked for me and helped me keep my sanity.
Good luck with that… and especially with the frig. Keep us posted!