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A Day in My Life

spring sunset

I love hearing about different people’s days. Yesterday was a lovely day – and not atypical for a nice day, so I thought I’d share it as a day in my life.

  • Mike leaves for work after having breakfast with Emma. Everyone else is asleep, but my ultimate Daddy’s girl does her utmost to get up in time to wave goodbye to Dad in the morning!
  • Emma turns on the light in the kids’ room, but Johnny sleeps through it – for the first fifteen minutes or so. I would have her turn it off, but he needs to get up for school – still adjusting to Daylight Savings Time changes.
  • Everyone is up. I jump in the shower, and for once nobody comes in with drama stories.
  • Breakfast – Emma for the second time. Granola with strawberries.
  • Getting Johnny ready for school – shoes, snack, backpack
  • Get Johnny off to preschool for the morning.
  • The girls play with our felt fashion bears. I clean up breakfast, read some email, start a load of laundry.
  • The girls have moved on to experimenting with glitter glue and napkins. Besides making symmetry art, Emma experiments with putting glitter glue on a plate and “printing” onto napkins.
  • Emma keeps making art. Lily comes and sits on my lap in the glider rocker while I talk to my mom on the phone. She says hi to Grandma.
  • Snack time. I throw the laundry in the dryer.
  • The girls and I go to the library, leaving in time to get Johnny home from preschool.
  • Lunch – pizza. Johnny is upset about the tiny tomato pieces, and he picks them off. Good thing he doesn’t realize pizza sauce is made almost entirely out of tomatoes!
  • I help Emma get ready for school. She is very excited to take a sliced kiwi for her snack! I put her hair in ponytails for gym class, and Lily surprises me by asking for ponytails too. Both girls are so cute with their hair done!
  • My friend picks Emma up for school.
  • Lily and Johnny head out in the backyard to play, mostly in the wading pool. Gorgeous weather today!!!
  • Johnny and Lily see a bug and run into the house screaming in terror. Working on that one.
  • Too spooked to head back out (for a while) in spite of my insistence that beetles are harmless, we pull out puzzles and alphabet magnets. Johnny matches upper and lowercase alphabet letters. Both kids are upset that one of our puzzles is missing the baby, but not enough to look for the baby. Working on that one, too.
  • Johnny and Lily move on to playing with cars, and then with the felt bears Emma and Lily played with this morning.
  • We pick Emma and her friend up from school – drop her friend off at home, then head home.
  • More time playing outside. I throw dinner (rice and chili casserole I had made and frozen) in the oven – super easy!
  • The kids are restless, so we have an impromptu French lesson. Haven’t done that in ages, but they think it’s fun. We pull out colored bears and work on color names. Then they keep playing with their bears while I check email/clean up.
  • More playing outside. I have them come in for dinner. They love the casserole – hooray!!! During dinner they spot imaginary mosquitoes and get scared. We talk about mosquito bites and how they aren’t very bad.
  • Load the dishwasher and start it. Should have done that earlier – oops. Run another load of laundry, which also should have gone in earlier.
  • Mike gets home. We all say hi to him, then it’s time for the kids to get ready for bed.
  • Kids are asleep. Mike eats dinner. We catch up on our respective days. I pull out the laundry, but only fold the big items. The rest gets to wait until tomorrow.
  • Blog/email/calendar/texts from friends catch-up time while Mike draws notes for the kids to read in the morning and does more work.
  • Empty dishwasher and reload.
  • Time for bed.

And that’s what I remember of the day! Normally we would read books, and I know the kids read on their own, but I think I missed out on that today somehow.

What does a day in your life look like? Here are three days in my life from 2009 – things have changed a lot!

MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.

28 thoughts on “A Day in My Life”

  1. I am like that about bugs too. I can’t even go in my back yard, because there are so many trees close to the house and I feel trapped. Yeah, I’m working on that. LOL!

  2. It’s great that your kids play so well independently. My days with Anna often have “Mom, I am bored! Can I play on your computer?” moments which drive me a little crazy. But mostly my days have been nothing but work-work-work lately.

    1. One way in which it’s easier to have several instead of one – they entertain each other…

  3. Wow, I totally missed this post somehow. I’m glad I saw the comments over at KBN about your post.

    I agree with your kids mosquitoes are horrible horrible things.

    1. I am not a fan of mosquitoes. I talked the kids into staying out last night, and Lily got a bad bite on her hand and Emma one on her leg…

  4. Busy day! My days vary but while the kids are in school, I do my blogging, writing, photo editing, Ten Thousand Homes work. Since it’s such a variety, I try to do certain things on certain days rather than everything every day. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn’t. Once the kids get home from school, it’s snacks, homework, playtime, bath, dinner, etc. I LOVE the slowness of the weekends. :)

  5. It is nice your kids the 2 older have one on one with Lily! Love second breakfast! Books – can never fit everything in!

    Today…
    calls to preschool & doc – my son has ear infection; drop-off daughter for K, breakfast of cheese and juice in car; doctors appointment; home because we forgot my daughter’s glasses! drop them off at school; library, drive-through lunch which we ate at my parent’s house (they are in FLA and I had to turn the heat off for them), play with toys there and take more bird pictures; finally CVS for prescription; home and nap for my son; me – talk to mom on phone and some paperwork and computer; pick-up daughter, play outside – really nice out, independent Lego and reading, dinner a la carte and watching Nick Jr., Daddy briefly appears between jobs – sigh; after dinner – me computer – kids playing a game they invented that somehow has me paying for food that I already bought! not there yet but in bed at 9 and books until 9:30; things it doesn’t seem like I will get to – Legos with my son : ( and a couple hours of work so I am not cramming on the weekend oh and laundry that is getting wrinkly in the dryer. Wow – long day!!!

    1. That is a BUSY day, Ann!

      I do really love that Lily gets one-on-one time with each of the older kids!

  6. Isn’t it amazing how much we actually DO get done in a day? I love doing this because it focuses on the positive. Rather than reminding myself of all the things I just couldn’t seem to fit in, I acknowledge how “full” our day really was. I have to do this again, like right now!

    1. I know! I did this for the first time three years ago, and at the time I felt like I wasn’t getting ANYTHING done. Having it all written out made me feel much better about my day!

      1. Kim @ The Educators Spin On It

        Maryanne I love how both you and Sofia phrased it here, focusing on the positive and what truly seeing what is happening on a daily basis in our homes with and for our children. I love how you wrote it down and I have a feeling many of us could have very easily put our names at the top but when we read it in print it paints a true picture of what you’ve accomplished and provided for your children and your family. Thanks for sharing!

    1. Thanks for sharing! I’ve always wanted to do a detailed version, but haven’t made it work yet :)

  7. This is awesome! I try to write our typical days in the kids’ journals every few months so I don’t forget the routines we went through. That is so much a part of our lives, then it changes, and I wonder how we “did it”. Thanks for sharing!

  8. Elisa | blissfulE

    What a great post! I love the glimpse behind the scenes. I should do a post like this soon, too.

  9. We all live parallel lives, although yours is pretty darn productive. My kids are all in school now so I have a little more flexibility. But really I find myself doing the same chores and errands as before, just without all my little helpers, which makes it much faster, surprise, surprise.

    1. We’ve had amazing weather for March this week – very unusual for us, and we’re loving it!

  10. Our days have been play, read, snack, outside, outside, outside. Come in finally at 4:30 and try to whip something up for dinner, Daddy gets home and we eat, then everyone passes out by 7pm :) This weather is just amazing and my house and laundry are showing it!!

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