May Day Hayday

We just got back from spending time in Boise for a week and a half. My uncle passed away, like I said before, and we went down for the funeral. It was a lot of fun! I took advantage of the extra hands and spent some time doing some artsy-crafty stuff, which I think I forgot how much I really enjoy doing.

Isaac can now stand up while holding onto anything - furniture, boxes that were meant to be blockades and became his playground, the exersaucer, mom's hands, the armoir, whatever. And he put Abby to good use today to sit up all by himself! What a champ! He is a determined problem solver like no other. And the world is his playground/problem to be solved.

Abby is definitely back in her element here at home. I don't know what it was, but it seems she just wasn't her carefree self while we were in Boise. She didn't like to play by herself and wanted mommy to hold her all the time. But here -- she's all smiles and laughs and chatter and loves to play, play, play! And, p.s., you never saw a child's face light up as much as Abby's did when she saw her daddy had come to pick us up. She was SOOOOOO excited to see him! She LOVES her daddy!

Dave is chipping away at his last school assignments while still trying to keep up with work and prepare for finals next week. We are so excited for the end of the school year, excited that this means we will have him home with us before 11:00 p.m. every night and hopefully get to enjoy some of the moments that happen after 7:00 in the morning. We're looking forward to hiking, camping, biking to daddy's work, running, walking to church, taking pictures, and just getting OUT together as a family.

And that's what life looks like. I thought it would be fun (for me, at least) to jot down our routine - or what I try to make routine in the Chaffee household.
6:00-7:00 -- Babies wake up, which means mom does too, no matter how late I was up waiting for Dave to come home the night before. I feed them their bottles and then put them in their highchairs to snack on cereal while we watch General Conference DVD's together. They love the music; I love that I get some "scripture time" in the first thing.

7:30-8:30 -- Babies take a nap. They usually start getting tired after an hour, but I try to keep them occupied and happy for an hour and a half or so. Isaac will usually sleep for about 45 minutes to an hour. Abby sleeps an hour and a half to two hours. I put Isaac in his room and Abby in my room, which leaves me free to roam the rest of the house, eat some breakfast of my own, maybe take a shower, and work on laundry, dishes, whatever (if there's time -- usually I just get the breakfast and shower part in, if I'm lucky, before Isaac wakes up). Isaac is pretty independent, but that means he requires a LOT of supervised playtime (otherwise I find him into everything that I haven't yet "babyproofed" - and more work for mom is just not my idea of fun right now). So we have some playtime and then some real breakfast.

10:00-11:00 -- Bottle #2, followed by lunch. This is usually cheese and crackers and maybe some whole wheat bread chunks. They love to sit together and eat and talk and laugh. And I love that they are fine-tuning their fine motor skills and, for the most part, self-sustaining. I try to keep them awake for two hours after they wake up, whenever that may have been. This means trying to keep Isaac awake for three hours if he had a shorter nap than Abby, just to keep them on the same "schedule." That takes some energy, creativity, and lots of singing, whistling, dancing, etc. Whatever I can think of, really! So - between noon and 1:00, they go down for their second nap of the day. Again, Abby sleeps longer than Isaac, which means I have a short break for my own lunch and to do a little cleaning or paying bills or taking out the garbage or scrubbing stains out of baby clothes or whatever.

2:00-3:00 -- Bottle #3, followed by some more playtime. If I'm really good, I'll sit them in the swing and saucer and read them a story or two. If I'm really bad, I'll put some Baby Einstein on and let them play to that as their background noise. If the weather is good, this is when we take a walk or meet Dave on campus or whatever. I try to keep them happy and awake until bedtime, around 7:00 in a perfect world. That means playtime, dinner (before they get too tired. This is usually veggies and fruit or yogurt, mixed with Multi-Grain Cereal to add some substance), bathtime, story time (if I can keep their attention that long), a final bottle, and finally bedtime! Whew! Truly, the afternoon is one long marathon! From the time they wake up from their second nap and get bored (or tired) of independent play until the time I want them to go to sleep, I'm pretty much constantly on my feet and trying to keep both of them going until the end!

Abby LOVES bathtime! She gets so excited -- kicks her legs, flaps her arms, laughs, and coos the entire time. Isaac is still just a little skeptical -- until he sees the faucet, shampoo, hair brush, soap, etc. that line the tub, then he's all curiosity and hard to keep IN the tub without being IMMERSED in the water that he doesn't quite understand is there and DANGEROUS! Fun, fun, fun! I usually put Baby Einstein on for one to watch while I bath the other one and then switch. They love the babies on "Baby's First Moves" and also love the music on "Baby's Mozart." Those are probably the two we watch the most. What am I saying, they're pretty much all we watch! We also have "Baby's First Sounds," which is good. But I think the kids on it are a little older, so they don't enjoy it as much right now.

7:00 rolls around, and that is (hopefully) bedtime. The main problem, with VERY few (meaning almost literally one or two) exceptions is that they rarely choose to follow schedule on the same nights. One night, Abby will go down without a problem and sleep through the entire night, waking up at 7:00 the next morning happy as a lark. That same night, Isaac will fight going to bed or pull his pacifier out ten times and scream like his world has come to an end until he finds it again (usually on his own at this point, though sometimes he gets so wound up looking for it that it falls behind the crib or gets lost in his blanket). Sometimes his teeth are bothering him, so he has a hard time soothing himself and wakes up with a yelp (more like a scream that sounds like someone just stabbed him in the back). On the nights that he goes to bed just fine, Abby will wake up screaming and then decide it's playtime. I don't know -- in a perfect world I would be a textbook mom and know how to let them work through everything on their own; but I am learning what things they can work through, what cries to ignore, and when the crying has gone on so long that I need to intervene and hope it isn't too late to calm them down. Some nights, they both play off of each other. One hears the other scream and wakes up screaming as well (I think it's just a pity cry, but it still keeps me hopping!). That's why I started putting Abby to bed on our bed and then moving her to her room when Isaac is asleep and Abby is in a deep enough sleep that Isaac doesn't disturb her. It works -- call it what you will, warn me 'til you're blue in the face. I know it probably isn't ideal, but it works for us. And that buys me peace of mind.

Once they do get to bed, I clean up the house, eat dinner, maybe change the laundry, whatever. On good days, I cook something and divide out the leftovers and pack up Dave's meals for the next day. And then I try to find some time to get online for a few minutes and just veg. Dave often doesn't get home until after 10:00, sometimes later. We have companionship prayer and scripture study together every night, which is the one thing I look forward to all day long. So I try to stay awake and wait for him. When I can't (or when I'm out of town or he thinks he is going to be extra late), I call him or he calls me and we just do it over the phone.

And that is a VERY typical day in the Chaffee household!

People have asked me how I do it all. My answer is simple: "I don't!"