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A Day in the Life - Monday

I've been wanting to do those day in the life posts because I find them completely irresistible in blogs or on Instagram (back when I used to use Instagram). The trouble is I always want to do a post about the day I'd like to have rather than the actual day. In my imaginary day the floor under our table is always clean. Never crusted with toast crumbs and dried macaroni. Certainly in an ideal world I'd never walk around in sweaty pajamas for 2 1/2 hours. Oh well.

5:30 a.m. Wake up and get on the elliptical. I don't ever change out of my pajamas to exercise in the morning because I figured out that a good way to make a habit of exercising somewhat regularly is to make it as simple as possible to start. So I just put my hair up in a ponytail and put on socks and shoes. The elliptical is just 5 feet away from the end of my bed, so starting doesn't get easier than that. I sincerely hope nobody ever sees me exercising on the elliptical while I'm wearing unicorn pajamas. Christopher has seen it but I think after 6 years he is starting to get used to sightings of frizzy-haired weirdos puffing away on the exercise machine.

Usually while I'm on there I listen to Max McLean read the daily Bible passages on The Listener's Bible website. Today's passages are from Genesis, Matthew and Psalms. Christopher leaves for work a little before 6.

6:15 a.m. Julian wakes up. I get him a snack and a cup of milk and let him sit in my lap on the couch while I solve the daily Wordle and look at the articles from Tim Challies' daily A La Carte blog post.

7:00 a.m. Silas gets up and I start making breakfast. I'm making one of their favorites today: lemon chia seed muffins. While the muffins are baking I wash the dishes and start a pot of coffee. Micah comes out when the muffins are nearly finished baking.

8:00 a.m. We're finishing up breakfast. After breakfast Micah brings me a stack of picture books and asks me to read to him so I say I will. We all squeeze onto the couch together and read three picture books. Then I make the beds while I'm finishing my cup of coffee. I tell Micah and Silas to get dressed while I get Julian dressed. Micah chooses a red Lightning McQueen shirt and navy blue sweatpants. Pretty good. Silas chooses a blue striped shirt and gray sweatpants printed with orange dinosaurs. Less good, but okay for a Monday. On Mondays I try hard to stay home to let the kids rest after a full Sunday.

9:00 a.m. I can finally take a shower. The kids are playing in their room with the giant floor puzzles they got for Christmas. I think they're pretending the puzzle pieces are DVDs and they are running a DVD store on their bunk bed. When I get out of the shower and start putting on makeup and fixing my hair, Silas and Micah get into a squabble over a train toy. I'm not exactly sure what's going on or who had the toy first so I decide to solve the problem by telling Silas to please get out his math book and start doing his worksheet pages. This week's lesson is counting by fives and for the first time this year he's not picking up the new skill right away. I think it will just take more time and practice.

10:00 a.m. While Silas finishes his math, Micah and I do crafts on the couch next to him. Some foam sticker snowflake ornaments on clearance after Christmas. They are pretty cute, so I think we can use them to decorate for my mom's birthday on Friday. Julian has a snack and a cup of milk and gets tucked in for his nap. Silas (tearfully) finishes counting by fives for the day and gets to make two snowflakes.

11:00 a.m. We do Silas's Alpha-Phonics lesson and read a chapter of Ramona and Her Mother. The boys seem interested in the story of Ramona pretending to be a fireman and wearing her flannel pajamas under her clothes to school. She gets way too hot, of course. I think it's such a cute and heartwarming chapter. Just like something a real seven year old would do.

12:00 p.m. I start putting chicken in the crock pot for supper while Silas and Micah sit at the dining room table and work on their handwriting pages. I think any day we have chicken tinga tacos for supper is a good day for me. I modified the recipe from Catz in the Kitchen for crock pot. I blend up a sweet onion, two tomatoes, a teaspoon of minced garlic and a chipotle in adobe sauce in the blender and pour the mixture over the chicken breasts in the crock pot. Then season the chicken with cumin, oregano and salt and pepper. By supper we can shred it with forks and have it in tacos or on nachos. It's so good topped with avocado, queso fresco, lime juice, and lettuce and cilantro if we have them (we don't today because there weren't many greens at Walmart when I was there last week).

Then I get lunch ready, just when Julian wakes up from his nap. Today we are having snack plates with grapes, veggie straws, mozzarella sticks and sliced turkey. When I taste the turkey it seems like it's gone off a bit so I gather it up off the plates and throw it away. Not much of a lunch. But nobody is very hungry because they were snacking on muffins for a lot of the morning so it works out.

1:00 p.m. I read my library book on Hoopla for a little while after lunch. A Lynn Austin book I've read before. I know we should try to go outside to play or go on a walk before it gets dark but I feel tired and the thought of wrestling 3 kids into their snow gear sounds like too much right now. The kids are starting to squabble again so I tell them to go in my bedroom and put on a show for awhile while I take a nap on the couch. Turns out Julian is scared of Thomas the Train so he stays in the living room with me and plays with Duplos next to the couch.

2:30 p.m. Almost time for Christopher to come home. I clean and dust the living room, then vacuum the couches, rugs and the entry hall outside our apartment. All of the boys are building Duplo houses, Duplo hammers and Duplo axes now. Micah asks if I like his ax. One of Silas's early Alpha-Phonics lessons months ago had two practice sentences that said "Dan has an ax. Dan is mad." That sounded concerning to me and I took the lesson that if someone asks you if you like their ax you should always answer Yes.

3:30 p.m. Christopher gets home. Julian climbs on the couch to look out the window. He says "DADA!" and starts jumping up and down with excitement. Christopher brings in the mail and there's an Amazon package I've been waiting for: some black velvet house slippers. I've decided that slippers are a sanity saver for a mom because they keep you from feeling crumbs on the floor while you're walking around the house. And when you live with little kids there are always crumbs on the floor, even if you faithfully vacuum and sweep every day.

4:00 p.m. I sweep and mop the floors and then finish fixing supper.

5:00 p.m. We eat supper. Then I spend some time working on my gemlog while the kids play.

6:30 p.m. I put the kids in the bath and start cleaning the kitchen. Christopher helps them put on their pajamas, brushes their teeth, reads them a story and helps them say a Bible verse.

8:30 p.m. Christopher and I get ready for bed and get into bed. This month I've been watching the Rings of Power on my phone at night. So far I've really enjoyed it. I'm on episode 5. After that is over I check on the kids in their beds one more time and then get back into bed to go to sleep.

Overall I'd say this was a great Monday. I could have done better. For example, I know we would have all been better off if we had gone outside for awhile but I couldn't seem to muster the energy. It's so much easier to stay cozy and comfortable inside, especially in the winter. Also, our bathroom was getting kind of dirty and I meant to take time to scrub it but didn't get to that either. Silas cried over his math for 20 minutes and that was painful for all of us. So it wasn't picture-perfect but it was still a good day.