a day in the life - jen

Woot!  I actually have 'a day in the life' post to share with you this week.  Get excited!  Please meet Jen... I know I've mentioned her blog before, and if you didn't check it out then you should now.   But before you jump over there take a peak at a day in her life!

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Hi! My name is Jen and I blog over at Let's Make it Ours about renos, crafting and kids. I am the mom of two kids, a four year old girl and a boy who is about to turn one. Since I live in Canada, I was fortunate enough to have a year off for maternity leave. Since I stopped working before my son was born, my year is up and I am currently working from home part time for a publishing company but will be back in my real office starting December 1st. The day I am sharing with you is a typical Wednesday around here. It is a work day for me, but since my husband works weekends, he has the day off.

4:45 am - I wake up to the sound of my baby talking to himself in his crib. After 10 minutes, I realize that soon he will be wide awake and I should just go ahead and breastfeed him. 10 minutes later, he is fast asleep and I am back in bed. 

6 am - I wake up, check the time and realize that everyone is still sleeping (yay!). I sneak downstairs, make myself some tea and check my facebook, emails and google reader. I really need this time to myself in the morning. I would much rather sacrifice an hour more of sleep for some peace and quiet! 

6:45 - My husband and daughter come downstairs at the same time that I hear my son on his monitor. My husband leaves for a run so I take my daughter upstairs and she plays in her room while I change and attempt to feed the baby. He decides that he is not interested in eating. 

7:15 - We head back downstairs and I make breakfast for both kids. A cinnamon raisin bagel for my daughter and applesauce, diced peaches and oatmeal for my son. Because no morning is complete without a temper tantrum, my daughter decides that she cannot eat the bagel because there is raisins in it, even though she loves raisins. It is too early for an argument so she gets cereal instead....ironically, she chooses raisin bran out of the pantry and happily eats it. After the kids are fed, my husband returns from his run and goes upstairs to take a shower while I make us scrambled eggs with peppers, mushrooms and spinach and a piece of toast. 

8:30 - 10:00 I check the time and realize that I need to start working right now and I unfortunately don't have time for a shower first. I thrown on some yoga pants and put my hair into a ponytail and make my way to my home office and get to work.

10:15 - I take a break to nurse, change and put my son down for his nap while my husband gets our daughter dressed and ready for school. 

10:30 - 12:00 - I keep working and manage to get everything wrapped up for the day which I am very happy about since that means I get to spend the afternoon with my family. 

12:00 - My husband returns home from taking my daughter to her afternoon preschool while I (finally!) take a shower and then the 3 of us have lunch together. 

1:00 - I try to feed my son before we leave, but he refuses to eat, won't even latch on. He is doing this a lot lately and it is quite frustrating. We leave to run some errands and then head to preschool for the 2:00 pickup

2:00 - Since it is an absolutely gorgeous day here we go for a walk to one of our favorite places.

3:00- We return home. Our daughter has a snack while I put the baby down for his nap. Luckily, he nurses this time, but only for 3 minutes. Oh well. My daughter and I head out to Benjamin Moore to look at paint colors for the kitchen. Chloe loves it there because they have a kids table with lots of toys. I leave more confused than when I arrived...I hate choosing paint colors. 

4:30 - My husband decides to take advantage of the nice weather and grill burgers for dinner. Since it gets dark at 4:30 now, this isn't the best idea, but I don't complain since it means that I am only in charge of making a salad while he cooks. I feed my son his dinner (noodles and steamed carrots) but he is still hungry. I give him a hard boiled egg yolk, which he devours. For "dessert" he gets some banana and organic puffed rice. I am starting to have a really hard time feeding him because even though he only has one tooth (which just broke through this week) he is not as interested in purees anymore and he has a dairy allergy which really limits his diet. I need to come up with some new ideas! 

5:30 - Since our daughter finished her dinner quickly tonight, she gets to choose an activity before bath time. She chooses Dora Bingo so the three of us play on the living room floor while the baby plays in his exersaucer. 

6:15 - Both kids take a bath. Nolan learned to pull himself up onto his knees in the tub this week and is quite proud of himself! I pull my son out and get him dressed while my husband does the same with our daughter. While listening to her scream because she doesn't want her teeth brushed, I am grateful that my son is still so easygoing...I am sure it won't last long! I put him on the floor to play while I hang up some clean laundry and tidy his room. 

6:45 - I feed and rock my son to sleep and put him into his crib. He reaches for his dinosaur blankie which I realize is NOT in his crib where I left it. My husband took it downstairs with him when he got him up from his nap. Luckily we get the blankie into the crib before he starts full on screaming. 

7:00 - I read my daughter one chapter out of her new chapter book, kiss her goodnight and head downstairs. 30 seconds later, she is out of bed and saying she is scared. I get her calmed down and back to bed and hope it is for good this time. 

7:30 - I throw a load of cloth diapers in the washer, tidy up the kitchen and run the dishwasher. I finally sit down to unwind with the computer while my husband heads out to the garage to prime the last set of kitchen cabinet doors. I am just about to order Nolan's birthday invitations, when he comes into the house and starts working on the cabinets bases so I get up to help him. Since we are priming with stinky oil primer, we have to prime at night when the kids are asleep. Unfortunately, the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is open all the windows in the kitchen and paint! 

8:45 - We are finally done painting, so we go downstairs to the rec room with a glass of wine and cuddle up to watch a couple shows on netflix. 

10:15 - We go upstairs and get ready for bed. I am exhausted and hope that my son sleeps until a decent hour tonight!

 And the questions...
1.  What is the most surprising thing to you about being a mother?
How hard it would be for me to hand my children over to someone else. I didn't anticipate having such a hard time with that. Even though I am a working mom, it is still really hard for me to leave them, especially when they are young. Sometimes I wish I was the type of mom that could leave the kids at home and go on vacation for a few days, but I am way too nervous. 

2.  What are some tips you would give to new moms, or soon to be mommas?

Take time to sleep when you bring your baby home from the hospital! In the early days, I knew that as soon as I started feeling tired, I started to feel a little sad and depressed. With both children, for the first couple weeks, I used to take a nap from about 7-9 pm so that I was better rested to deal with the night wakings. It was really hard for me to walk away and force myself to take a nap, but made a huge difference in how I felt. 

3.  What are your top 3 baby products?

• White  noise machine. This was a must for us because when our son came home after his 5 week nicu stay, he was used to lots of noise and bright lights. He still sleeps with the white noise machine on every night and it helps drown out his sister playing during nap time. 
• swaddle blankets - both my kids loved to be swaddled so these were a lifesaver for us. 
• itz been timer (or a similar iphone app) - When my daughter was born, I used a notebook to record info regarding how oftern she nursed and when she started sleeping through the night at 7 weeks, I had already stopped using it. My son on the other hand woke up every 30 min to 2 hours for months on end and the timer was a lifesaver for us. I used to wake up and think that it had been 2 hours and he was probably hungry, but when I would check the timer, I would find that it had only been 30 minutes so I knew that he didn't need to eat. Those months were such a blur! I still use this occasionally to record when I give him his medication or to see how long he is napping

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Thanks a bunch Jen!