I think the better question is, how could I not?
The ordinary weekend, in review:
Friday:
- morning: attend play group for young children with Down syndrome
- home for lunch and brief nap
- have friends over (ages 5 and 1) so that their parents can go out for their 10th anniversary. The older two help make pink, pig-shaped cookies together, which are adorable and we all enjoy.
- I go to Bread Co. to write for a while after putting Ada to bed, then come home to hang out with Paul for a couple of hours before bed
Saturday:
- Ellie and Paul makes scones, then a friend of Ellie's and her mom come over for a playdate
- As soon as they leave, we head out for Ellie's gymnastics
- We stop off for lunch on the way home
- After failed naps, we spend a long, long, lazy afternoon at home. It's cool and windy and not very nice outside. After a quick dinner, both girls go to bed early, and have restless nights.
- On the other hand, Paul and I have already finished watching Closer by 9:00! The girls have been asleep for 2 hours already!
Sunday:
- We go to church and Sunday School (I teach from a lesson I'd prepared the night before, after we watched a movie)
- We go out to brunch with friends
- The girls take very short naps, while Paul mows the yard and I straighten up inside
- We head out for the zoo
- along with the rest of St. Louis. After sitting forever in traffic, we end up at Turtle Park, which the kids loved.
- We go to Olive Garden on the way home.
- Ada passes out in the car on the way home, and Paul and I fight Ellie down to sleep for an hour after her bath and bedtime routine (as usual).
- Shortly after 9:00, Paul and I finally start our own evening routines: working on our laptops, dealing with the always replenishing stacks of paper, watching something on TV together, talking, etc.
- We pass out by 2:00 am.
- Ada gets up, as usual of late, at 5:00.
The only part of this that was really stressful and overwhelming and unpleasant? Saturday afternoon, the part that looks "relaxing" on paper.
2 comments:
I think one of the keys to your success is in the last 2 bullet points...parents asleep by 2am, kid up by 5am. How are you sane? :)
Pre-kids I needed 8-9 hours of sleep to function. I probably still do, but except for a brief period pre-Trystan (and pre-pregnancy-induced-nightly-bathroom-breaks), I've been lucky to get 6 in any one night over the past, say, 4 years.
Kind of like kids, I guess adults need different amounts of sleep. I just wish my kids needed a bit more. Trystan's easy and generally down by 8pm with little or no fuss. We start Char's bedtime routine at 8, and she's still jabbering in her room at 10. Both are up by 6-7am. If we could give up Char's afternoon nap, then the adults might have some evening time, but she still seems to need 1.5-2 hours in the middle of the day.
Kristi, I think most people need a lot more sleep than I'm getting to be healthy and whole; I know that I do.
I just also have a great need to do this work, and there's limited time in the day, so . . .
Ellie's sleep patterns are currently very similar to Char's, though we can usually get her to sleep around 9:15 if one of us lies in bed with her. She'll stay awake and jabbering indefinitely, but she will not stay in her room, unfortunately, so we often take a more active role in the process.
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