A Day in the Life

I have wanted to do these posts for several years and just never managed to get around to it.  I thought it would be neat to one day look back and see what a typical, randomly chosen day looked like in various stages of life, to write down as many details as I can that I know I will forget.  I really wish I had managed to do it when we lived in Louisiana, when the babies were little, etc. but better late than never!  So... a day in the life in the Holland household with a kindergartner, an almost 4 year old, and twin 20 month olds!

At 5:45 my alarm goes off and thankfully no one had woken up in the middle of the night. Huge praise! It's amazing how much better you can function with sleep.   I started setting my alarm to get up before everyone else several months ago because it was hard for me to go straight into mom world without a few minutes to myself to shower, read my devotion, etc. So..up, shower, and diet mt dew. I have an addiction to that stuff and I just can't seem or want to break it.

At 6:15 I make it downstairs and Ryan is already gone for the day.  I quickly start prepping breakfast for the kids and packing lunches as well as unloading the dishwasher from the night before. 6:30 is the magic number when I allow the big boys to come down.  However today Harrison sneaked down at 6:25 with a declaration that he was bleeding and starving.  I cut him some slack and let him stay up. And for the record he was definitely not bleeding!

Breakfast time! 3 out of 4 look relatively happy 

An hour later breakfast is served, lunches are made, kids dressed, diapers changed, teeth brushed, book bag packed, and the five of us are out the door around 7:30 to walk James to school.  My word for the year for 2017 has been "simplify" and one way I have done this is now when I pack James's lunch I go ahead and pack/make lunches for the other three so they are ready to pop out of the fridge and I don't have to spend more time prepping food later in the day.  We have also implemented a meal calendar so everyone knows what's on the menu and there is (theoretically) no complaining about what is being served or asking for extras. This mama is not a short order cook!

On the way home from James's school Harrison falls and skins his knee and proceeds to dramatize it for the remainder of the day. My favorite comment was "Mom thank goodness my knee didn't break completely in half and then I would have had to get one of those fake ones".  Thankfully we checked the mailbox on our way home and there is a special surprise waiting for H- an early birthday present from Sara, a cookie! The perfect distraction.

Dessert before 8:00 a.m.- why not? 

8:00- Harrison's good friend from preschool comes to play for an hour before they go to preschool together.  How funny is it that they wanted hot chocolate in June?

Toasting their hot chocolate

9:00- I load up the four kids and drop off Harrison and Benjamin for preschool.

9:30- Next it's off to the hospital for speech therapy for the twins.  Our big accomplishment is that we managed to walk from the parking lot to the hospital without using the stroller!  I have made it my goal to try to make them do this every time we go to speech because I am SO tired of taking that double stroller in and out of the car. The issue is not just walking that far, it's being obedient enough to hold hands and not throw a fit in the middle of the parking lot.

Waiting for Miss Leanne and Miss Kayla 

All done for the day!

Afterwards we headed to the Craven Smart Start Center which has a fun play area.  Andrew and Kate played and pulled out every toy possible and then after debating what to do we went to Panera to use my free cookie code which they split and I went to Chipotle and got myself lunch. We then strolled over to Petsmart to say hello to the animals and to the book store to get a new copy of Brown Bear because our old one fell victim to Kate's stomach virus last week. We were back to using the double stroller which we quickly discovered that none of these stores are very double stroller friendly.  At this point both Andrew and Kate are tired and miserable and ready for a nap and I have to physically hold them down  and force them into their car seats because they are both screaming and throwing fits and off we go to pick up H from preschool.

Kate is super serious about that cookie

Not overly impressed with the animals today 

12:15- Lunch, naps for babies, quiet time for Harrison, and after cleaning the kitchen I took my treasured 30 mins of time to recharge.  I try to do this each day to give myself a few moments before the insanity starts again.  Then it was prepping dinner  (because I learned a long time ago there is no making dinner during the witching hours with four kids) and making muffins for snack (a lot of my time involves dealing with these children's insane amount of food that they eat) and then cleaning the kitchen yet again.  After quiet time Harrison wanted to paint and I begrudgingly said yes. He loves doing art SO much but I get frustrated with the mess and clean up.  I hear the babies waking up but there is paint everywhere so in an effort to hold them off I send Harrison upstairs with three bowls of cereal so he can have a snack with the babies.  2 minutes later I hear him yell that Andrew dumped his all over the crib so up I go with the trusty Dustbuster which gets multiple uses a day at our house.

Harrison asked me to build him a fort to rest in 

Story time! 

"Hey mom can I paint my hand?" 

3:00 We load the car to get James and come back home for after-school snack. My plan was to go to gym to work out but mom guilt gets the best of me and instead I put A and K in the child care and take the boys swimming. James and Harrison LOVE going to the pool but it is hard because Andrew and Kate only get one hour of child care time so by the time we drop them off it doesn't leave much time for swimming.  45 minutes into our swim it thunders and the pool is shut down. I get the boys changed and pick up babies and by then there is a torrential downpour so all four of us along with the double stroller are soaked.  Make it home, feed everyone dinner, clean the kitchen yet again and we have patio playtime.

 Books and bed for the twins and once again I am SO thankful that they go to bed early.  At this point I'm beat so I make an exception to our "no TV on school days" rule and put on a bible video and tell the boys this is their bible story for the day.  No judgement lol.

That's right buddy- get on in that bed

Bed for the big boys, meltdown from Harrison who is overtired from the day. 8:00 rolls around and I'm still cleaning the kitchen and James comes down to ask me a question about Rosa Parks and segregation and to tell me that he is starving.  Where that all came from I have no idea but I cave and send him to bed with a banana after a brief history lesson.  Finally at 10:30 Ryan comes home and we both get to bed by 11 only to be both woken up by pages at 11:45 and 2:30 and off he goes to the hospital again, wakes me up at 5 when he returns, 5:45 my alarm goes off and we start another day!

Obviously every day varies in this house but this was a pretty typical day for this season of life.  All of this is about to change because summer is coming so the chaos is about to be amplified!