A Day In The Life Of...

When I saw Maria do a post about her daily routine, I thought it was a fun idea so I decided to do something similar. (I hope you don't mind Maria!)

This is actually my day from last Friday because, well, it's taken me a week to find time to write the post! My week days are all usually pretty similar though - Toby has a nap over lunchtime, so we usually do something in the morning (toddler group/shopping/coffee meet etc) and then he sleeps and then it's time to pick Izzy up. The hours always seem to disappear!

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This is how last Friday went anyway...

7.30am - alarm goes off, groan.

7.32am - Izzy, having heard the alarm, comes into my room already dressed. She usually wakes up when Liam's alarm goes off at 6.45am and plays in her room from then while I'm still fast asleep!

7.35am - bathroom, weigh (lost 0.4lb this week...whoop?!), get dressed.

7.45am - come downstairs, take photo of Izzy to send to my little sister (as requested). It was Children In Need day so she went to school dressed in all things spotty!

This is Izzy's idea of posing (without me asking her to)...worrying!

7.50am - make myself a latte, get kids' breakfasts (Nature's Path O's - they love them!). I do sometimes eat breakfast before the school run too, but I'm going out for coffee & cake in 2 hours so don't bother.

7.55am - Izzy eats breakfast. I drink my coffee while filling out Izzy's school lunch form, texting Liam and checking the Internet on my phone. Toby is still happily chatting to himself in his cot which makes things more peaceful!

8.10am - go upstairs, get Toby out of his cot, clean all of our teeth.

8.15am - back downstairs. Do Izzy's hair. She puts her coat on while I get Toby dressed.

8.20am - Izzy ready. Toby and I put coats and shoes on. Check I've got everything I need in Toby's change bag.

8.25am - quick whizz around house making sure lights are off, curtains open, beds made, house vaguely tidy. I don't always have time for this but I managed to get out of bed quite quickly this morning - if Izzy doesn't come in to my room, I often stay in bed pressing "snooze" on the alarm until almost 8am!

8.30am - leave the house to walk Izzy to school. Toby eats dry O's in his pushchair.

There's that pose again!

8.45am - get to school. Hang up Izzy's coat, give in lunch money, pay for milkshake (they get free fruit every morning and then you can buy toast for 15p on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, milkshakes for 30p on Wednesdays and Fridays) and donate some money for non-uniform/Children In Need.

8.55am - kiss and cuddle, leave Izzy at school, walk home.

9.10am - get home. Toby plays with toys while I put away last night's washing up and wash the breakfast dishes.

9.15am - uh oh. Toby is grumpy already. Crying, demanding food, throwing himself on the floor etc (!). Joy. It's not nap time yet, I just hope he behaves better when we're out. Eating out with young children is really not at the top of my list of enjoyable things at the best of times.

9.20am - read a book to Toby to calm him down. Get baby snot all over my top (nice!) so quickly have to change. Come back downstairs to find Toby calmly "reading" book to himself, phew.

Who needs matching socks?!!

9.30am - leave the house again to walk into town to meet my Grandparents.

9.40am - pop into card shop to check out 60th wedding anniversary invites to see if my Grandparents would be better off buying some instead of getting Liam to design/make them. They don't have any wedding anniversary invites at all, let alone specifically 60th ones, boo.

9.45am - meet my Grandpa at the coffee shop. Grandma is running a little late so we sit down to wait for her.

9.55am - Grandma arrived so we ordered. I'd hoped to have something breakfast-like to eat, but my Grandpa insisted on paying and he and my Grandma were just having drinks. Scrambled eggs on toast was more than twice the price of a cake, so I just got a latte and shared a flapjack with Toby.

As is usual when we try to take the children out to eat, I spent most of my time chasing Toby up and down the cafe. Luckily it was really quiet and he is cute and smiley rather than noisy, but still. One woman thought he was so sweet that she gave him 50p to "buy himself some sweets". Nice thought, but slightly embarrassing for me.

One of the few times he was trapped into sitting still!

10.30am - leave the coffee shop and go to the local toy shop, which has a ball pool.

10.40am - Grandma leaves to go to her hair appointment. Carry on chatting to Grandpa while Toby "makes" us cups of tea in the toy kitchen.

10.50am - leave toyshop, say goodbye to Grandpa. Go to Julian Graves to buy almonds and Boots to buy nappies.

11am - Toby's looking tired. Start heading home.

11.05am - quick stop at Co-Op to buy some pasta and kitchen roll (oh what an exciting life I lead!) resist buying the reduced custard slice or the half price Ben & Jerry's.

11.25am - get home. Toby has fallen asleep on the walk home so quickly scoop him out of his pushchair, change his nappy and put him in his cot. He carries on sleeping whilst lying on the floor with his legs in the air having his nappy changed which, to me, is just the cutest thing!

11.30am - put a sweet potato in the oven for my lunch. Unload shopping. Quick tidy up of the kitchen.

11.40am - go upstairs to tidy Izzy's bedroom and sort out her ballet stuff for after school. This week she gets to take a teddy in for Children In Need.

11.45am - realise there's not a lot of housework I can do (although I'm sure Liam would always disagree with this statement!!!) as washing up is done, I don't want to do the hoovering as it would wake Toby up, and I did two loads of laundry yesterday so no more drying space at the moment. Yipee. Decide to make myself a pot of coffee. (Friday = extra caffeine it seems!)

12pm - sit down with a cup of coffee and the Julian Grave's magazine I picked up this morning. Peace. Well it would be if next door's builders would stop banging and drilling anyway.

12.05pm - part way through reading the magazine, I get to a section dedicated to vegetarian ideas for Christmas, yey! I love the look of the roasted celeriac, blue cheese and apple stack. Perhaps I'll make it on one of the days surrounding Christmas.

12.20pm - go into the kitchen to continue preparing lunch.

12.30pm - lunch time! Baked sweet potato, half a bunch of steamed asparagus and about half a tub of (delicious, if slightly spicy) Waitrose piri piri houmous.

12.40pm - finish lunch, I really must try to slow down my eating. Wash up dishes. I'm trying to keep on top of the washing up today as yesterday I left the dishes all day and by the evening the whole kitchen had been taken over by them. Oops!

12.45pm - sit down with another coffee and read a few blogs on my phone.

1.15pm - whoops, half an hour has slipped by! Time for some more tidying. Put away everyone's clean clothes, have a sort out of my side of the bedroom (aka the messy side!), and tidy up the sitting room.

1.45pm - knock on the door. The little glass bottles I ordered from the Jam Jar Shop to decant my Christmas vodkas into have arrived! As well as *ahem* the 24x 250ml bottles, I also ordered a couple of large Kilner jars and a mini funnel to make the vodka decanting easier.

1.55pm - decide to use one of the large Kilner jars to soak some almonds - which I then turned into almond milk on Saturday.

2pm - Toby wakes up and we have sleepy cuddles :)

2.05pm - get Toby's sandwiches out of the fridge for his lunch.

2.15pm - playtime with Toby. His favourite thing at the moment is the plastic kitchen my Dad found in a charity shop a couple of years ago. So I got made multiple "cups of tea" and "plates of spaghetti".

2.25pm - Liam phoned on his lunch break. Chatted to him for 10 minutes, then back to playing with Toby. His also really loves books at the moment. We have so many of them, so we read a few before he gets bored and wanders off! We normally have to leave the house at 3pm to pick up Izzy from school, but on Fridays my Mum does school pick-up as she then takes Izzy to ballet.

3.15pm - share a seed stacked bar (from Maria's giveaway) with Toby. Well, I don't have much choice about the sharing part - see that little hand creeping towards the food!

3.30pm - realise there is still coffee in the pot, so have my 5th (and final) coffee of the day.

3.45pm - pop outside to give Izzy's ballet clothes to Mum, who has pulled up in her car after having collected Izzy and my little sister from school.

4.15pm - chat on the phone to my Mum for a bit. Several spoonfuls of Justin's hazelnut butter also happened at this point. So good.

4.45pm - I should be hoovering, but instead play some more with Toby. He's so talkative (well not words, but noises) when it's just me and him, and has the cutest giggle when being tickled!

5.30pm - Izzy gets home. Quick chat about her day and yet more cuddles. Cuddles > housework! :)

5.45pm - leave kids slumped in front of the TV and start making dinner - cook pasta, make white sauce etc.

5.50pm - realise we have no cheddar. Gah.

5.55pm - decide Toby's not going to be able to stay awake long enough for dinner (sometimes he manages it, sometimes he doesn't) so give him some quick food and put him to bed.

6.15pm - put dinner (easy, now Brie and cheese string (!!) topped, pasta bake) in the oven. Quickly tidy up downstairs.

6.25pm - Toby wouldn't settle so gave up and brought him back downstairs. Pasta meals are his favourite anyway.

6.30pm - Liam gets home. Weekend time! :)

6.40pm - dinner's ready - pasta bake with a white sauce, peas and cubed basil tofu.

Blurry photo, but tasty meals. I often cook pasta bakes on Friday as by the end of the week we're all tired and they're nice and easy to cook whilst still being tasty.

7pm - children's bedtime. It's Liam's turn to put Izzy to bed (she's very insistent that we take it in strict turns!). I'd been planning to do the washing up while Liam reads Izzy a story, but instead slump on the sofa. Hopeless. At least I've kept up to date with the washing up so there's only this evening's dishes to do - will do them in the morning.

7.30pm - time for Liam and I to relax! When Liam comes downstairs we turn on the TV to watch Children In Need. I had been planning to write a blog post, but feel too tired and drained so just end up lying on the sofa. My tummy started hurting while I was cooking dinner which  doesn't help.

8pm - Liam offers ice cream. Despite the tummy ache, I of course say yes. This was Hagen Dazs caramel brownie ice cream I think.

No idea why bowl looks yellow inside - it isn't really!

10pm - Turn the TV off, get a glass of water and go to bed. During the week, we usually end up going to bed later as we have to make packed lunches etc (and never seem to start doing this until 10pm) so it's nice to actually get to bed on time.

10.30pm - can't sleep. Read a few blogs on my phone. Eventually drift off to sleep sometime after 11pm - better than most nights recently, not sure why I've been having trouble sleeping but some nights I haven't been getting to sleep til gone 1am, yawn.

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Whew, that took much longer to write than I was expecting! It took forever to keep track of everything on my phone at the time too...not something I'll be doing regularly!! I enjoy reading about other people's daily routines but I think mine is quite boring - they say that you always find your own kids interesting...but no one else does! And housework isn't exactly fun to do, read or write about!!

What is the favourite part of your day? One of my favourite parts (when it's not raining at least) is the walk to and from school with Izzy - she's always such a chatterbox in the morning, and I like hearing about how her day has gone after school. When she gets home she usually just wants to relax and watch "Horrid Henry" so it's nice to get a chance to catch up with her before the TV steals her attention!!