One Day

 

I heard about The Hollywood Housewife's One Day challenge through Vita Familiae and thought it would be fun to participate. The idea was to document one day, this past Wednesday, November 14, of my life in pictures. Since I know that next year, with no preschool children at home, my days will look quite a bit different than they do today, I was excited to create this digital scrapbook of the ordinary details of one day. 

I discovered that while most of my days are ordinary, there is no "typical" day for me.  And you know, I kind of like it that way :)

6 a.m. I hear singing coming from our preschooler Bubby's new bedroom, right down the hall from ours.  He makes it until 6:17 a.m. before bursting out to announce, "there's a 7 on my clock!"  Poor Bubby.  There was a 7, just not in the right place.

6:20 a.m. Our 7th grader, AKD, and Hubby are out the door to the bus stop, and I'm out of bed into the shower.  It's hard to leave my warm fuzzy flannel sheeted bed, but the children will be up soon, so I'd best get started.

6:35 a.m. The phone rings.  It's AKD calling from the bus to let us know he left his swim stuff at home.  Could we bring it to him?  Good thing those other parents let their kids bring cell phones on the bus.  And good thing Hubby answered the phone instead of mean mommy, who might have told him to go without.

6:45 a.m.  Reading 1 Corinthians 12, and wondering what my part is.  Am I a foot? A mouth? A stomach?  Looking forward to chapter 13 tomorrow.

6:55 a.m. My customary breakfast of oatmeal with skim milk and chopped walnuts and a big glass of cold water.  As per usual, it will get cold before I can finish it due to various demands from my offspring.

7:35 a.m. Three of my favorite boys.  I L O V E the view from our dining room windows, especially as the sun rises.

 9:40ish a.m. Leaving school after a meeting at which a bunch of professionals informed us that our 4th grader, MC, meets the criteria for an educational diagnosis of autism.  Mixed feelings.  Sad to have slapped a label on my child, happy that he is eligible for additional educational support, hopeful for a brighter future for my baby, fearful that his challenges will overtake him, frustrated that it's taken this long.

9:45ish a.m. 10,000 Reasons is playing on the way home.  I am blessed in so many ways.  "Let me be singing when the evening comes..."

10:15 a.m. Bubby's watching Mighty Machines while I knock out a quick blog post.

10:30 a.m. Picking toys to bring upstairs to Bubby's new bedroom.  What with this move and purging a ton of toys last week, we might be able to repurpose this treasure chest to hold the linens and pillows displaced by Bubby's move.  Finding new places for everything we had stored in what was previously the guest bedroom is providing me with hours of mental gymnastics, as well as some great exercise as I'm carting the downstairs stuff up and the upstairs stuff down.  Fun.

11:00 a.m. Excavating.  The machine says, "let's move some rocks." We choose to believe it's saying, "let's move some blocks."

 11:35 a.m. Outside to blow bubbles, but first, some bowling with a pumpkin we've discovered has gone mushy.

11:53 a.m. A surprise by our front door--I wonder how long that's been there.  We don't use that door very often... We get another surprise a few minutes later when the mailman arrives with a package too large for our mailbox.

11:55 a.m. Bubby's typical lunch of an open-faced peanut butter sandwich, banana, and milk--outside of course, even though the temp is 40 degrees and the sun has gone behind a cloud.  I have soup.  I make a silent bet with myself that I will still be having soup for lunch just about every day next year at this time.

12:30 p.m. Finally getting around to writing thank you notes for birthday gifts.

1 p.m. I am so tired.  Hoping and praying that Bubby will actually sleep during "rest" time this afternoon, and wondering if I can move its start time up half an hour or so.  I quick hop online while Bubby plays by himself for a bit.

 2 p.m. Time to read a book.  Dinosaur Train, of course.

2:09 p.m. It's finally rest time.  I'll read in bed and maybe end up taking a nap.  On my nightstand currently: The NIV Study Bible, The Meryl Streep Movie Club by Mia March, Twelve Unlikely Heroes by John McArthur, and Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl by Lysa Terkeurst.

 3:06 p.m. AKD is home and rest time is over.  Time to clean the bathrooms and find 10 things to get rid of.  The pile's getting pretty big.  Maybe I should revise the size of my donation on the gooddonor website.

 4:09 p.m. I'm attempting to get as much prep work for supper done as I can before MC comes home from school, so I can concentrate on helping him transition from school to home when he gets here,

 while AKD is doing this and Bubby is doing this.  Oh yeah, this is mother of the month stuff going on right here--one's rotting his brain with screen time and the other is doing potentially crippling stunts involving the couch and a balance ball, unsupervised.

4:25 p.m. MC is home and doesn't have homework (yay for a day off from homework).  As I continue to prepare supper I glance out the window and see these deer.

4:37 p.m. Outside playing trac-ball 500 with the boys--it's getting dark already.

 6:15 p.m. How does this even happen? Supper's done and Hubby has swooped in, grabbed AKD to take him to FROG and I'm left with this.  And two children who can't seem to get along.  There's even more on the other counters--dirty dishes, not children, thank God. 

9:00 p.m. The kitchen is (sort of) clean, all the boys are in bed, and I start in on the third item on my to-do list for today: vacuuming.  The other two were finding 10 things to get rid of and writing thank you notes. (I did it!)

10:30 p.m. After conking out on the couch for half an hour watching the news, I head to bed, exhausted.  Ready to rest and get up to do it all again tomorrow.