A Typical Day at Casa Brown

Are ‘day in the life’ posts sooo 2013? Based solely on the fact that I am just now, in 2015, hopping on board: probably. Always trailing a few trends behind the bandwagon over here.

Nevertheless, feast your eyeballs on a typical day at our place, with the exception that it is spring break (??? do not expect me to be able to explain why a preschooler needs a spring break), so Forrest was home all day. Also, the day pictured was a Friday, which brings Jeff home a blessed 2 hours earlier than every other weekday (glory hallelujah!).

7:02 Every single day, I tell myself that tomorrow will be the day I start setting my alarm bright and early so I can have an hour or so to myself before the kids wake up. And every night, I say, nah, forget that. I was cheerfully roused this morning by Forrest wailing that his toe was “destwoyed!” and “bweeding very much!!” (Translation: he stubbed it on his stepstool, no blood, no casualties.)

7:10 Meanwhile, Lady Bird waits pleasantly to be retrieved from her baby cage.

7:20 The chickens are briefly entertained by coloring while I use up some overripe bananas (the kids seem to be in a perpetual love-hate relationship with bananas, so I am either wiped clean of them entirely or surrounded by enormous quantities of half-rotten bananas—there is no middle ground). Heaven forbid they wait 30 minutes to eat a homemade breakfast, so they snacked on yogurt while we waited for --

8:00 Double Chocolate Banana Muffins. I don’t make hot, fresh breakfasts every morning (they usually have toast and yogurt for breakfast), but I often find myself baking something on Fridays. And those bananas—just begging to be reincarnated as muffins.

8:15 Heaven forbid I ever bake something without immediately instagramming it. 

8:23 After gorging ourselves on muffins (Forrest inhaled 3 in a row without hardly stopping for air in between, then daintily recommended we pack up the rest “for daddy”), we spent some time with our pile of new library books. We like to go to the library once a week, and we still had quite a few new books for the week that we hadn’t read yet. We found some great ones this week—plan on another edition of some of our favorite picture books shortly.

9:18 I laid Darcy down for her morning nap a little after 9 (a nap that, I am heartbroken to report, is rapidly disappearing—I suspect she only actually sleeps maybe 1 or 2 mornings a week, but hey, she sits in her crib and plays quietly for an hour most mornings, so I’ll take what I can get). And how to spend a quiet hour of bliss? Forrest watched cartoons for about an hour while I got some laundry started, showered, and --

9:42 got all ready for the day.

10:17 After much whining and many attempts at convincing me that he needed to stay in his pajamas all day, I finally convinced Forrest to get dressed and brush his teeth, which he insists on doing himself now (and does just a fantastic job of, what with the licking off of the toothpaste and spending all of 4 seconds on the brushing).

10:22 I should know better than to even try telling him that we should also brush his hair (the horror!!), but he offered to do it himself, and started by getting the comb wet, then licking all the water off. If ‘homeless chic’ ever becomes a trend, remember, you saw it here first.

10:56 Her Highness has awoken (or more likely, Her Highness has grown bored of her solitary confinement—the frequent chirps and giggles I heard coming from her room make a nap seem unlikely), and squawks for retrieval. Forrest likes to be the one to “get Daw-see up from her nap,” by which he means he likes to be the one to race into her room and excitedly shout, “Are you awake already?!?! You stinker!!! You should be sweeping!!” and hand her all the stuffed animals she threw out of her crib.

11:12 An early lunch to satisfy the hungry piglets—frozen meatballs, apple slices, and leftover peas and carrots for the kids, and white chicken chili that I discovered hidden in the freezer for me. Forrest ate the meatballs and apple slices and refused to touch the veggies, and Darcy devoured the carrots and a few bites of meatball without touching the apple or peas. 

 
12:14 With everyone fed, it’s off on errands we go. First we hit up Target in an attempt to find sandals for me and new dress shoes for Forrest, and found neither --

1:47 -- although we managed to find new shoes for the only person who didn’t need them, and a new shirt for me. I’ve convinced myself that Darcy, at almost 18 months, is not walking because her shoes have not been sturdy enough (yes, keep telling yourself that). A weekend in her sturdy new walkers has proved this theory was false. But she looks cute in them, so there’s that. And this was not a pleasant set of errands—Darcy was antsy and whiny the entire time, and furious that I wouldn’t let her grab and then hurl everything in sight. Delightful.

We also headed to Payless, where we struck out again, but endeared ourselves to the employee (I’m sure!!!) when Forrest loudly announced he had to poop (“real bad!!!”), and stampeded our way through the back storage room to the employees-only bathroom. Unsurprisingly, we also did not find any shoes at our next stop (Home Depot), but probably only because we popped in to make a return and didn’t browse. Darcy was near her breaking point, and had been whining for almost 2 hours straight—clearly time to call it quits.

1:58 Back home, Forrest proved himself a very unhelpful laundry assistant, but did perform a quick costume change.

2:06 The most wonderful time of the day: nap and quiet time. Forrest is long past the point of taking reliable daily naps (tears!!), but I’ve managed to convince him that he needs quiet time every afternoon. He occasionally falls asleep during quiet time, but he usually just sits in his room, reading or singing or playing (none very quietly—‘quiet time’ is kind of an optimistic title, it turns out). Darcy likes spending a few minutes snuggling with me before laying down for her afternoon nap, which is fantastic since she’s usually far too busy during the day to sit down and snuggle with me.

2:18 How many laundry pictures can I include in one post? With the kids down for nap/quiet times, yet more laundry beckons. But to be honest, I don’t hate doing laundry.  There are some household chores I really, really despise, but laundry isn’t so bad.

3:02 After the laundry, I got the kitchen straightened up and spent a bit of time answering emails and doing a few things online that needed doing, then turned to Hulu. With a muffin, of course. (Not pictured: the 3 cookies I decided were necessary after finishing the muffin.)

4:11 Much to my surprise, Forrest actually fell asleep during his quiet time (I about died when I saw the library book bag pulled up to his bed, and a stack of books propped up on his bed rail—sweet little nugget). He doesn’t take naps often these days, and generally wakes up from them in a spectacularly foul mood, so peeking in and seeing him sleeping is 50% “awwww, look at the sweetness!” and 50% “you are in for a ****storm of grouchiness when he wakes up.”

4:26 But this one woke up perky, thank goodness, and with a delightful case of sweaty baby bedhead to boot. She’s about 50/50 on grouchy/happy afternoon nap wakeups, so it’s always a treat when she wakes up smiling.

4:39 Forrest insisted he needed some tablet time after waking up from his nap, and for some reason thinks he needs an audience while he plays. Whatever. I sat with him while he diddled around on the tablet for a few minutes while Darcy played with his Legos, and it wasn’t long before --

4:57 Daddy got home! Darcy perked up as soon as she heard the garage door opening, and took off toward the door to greet him.

5:21 The weather has been amazing, so we headed on a walk and hit up the park a few blocks from our house --

5:32 -- and practiced our walking. Had to test out the new shoes, you know. See if they’d do the trick and magically get her walking on her own. (They did not.)

6:26 I got dinner together while Jeff played with the kids, and realized too late that the meal was entirely shades of beige. Apples, corn, and Chicken Ranch Burgers (Darcy loved the corn and chicken, but Forrest loved the burgers, bun, and apple).

7:06 A quick bath, then into bed. Darcy absolutely flipped when Forrest kept taking toys from her in the bath, so I gave her not one but both of her beloved blankie bears to bring to bed. Anything to get her relaxed for bedtime instead of howling herself to sleep. We were given one bear as a baby gift, and she got so attached to it that I bought a second to keep as a replacement in case anything should ever happen to the first one. And she is absolutely delighted whenever she gets to snuggle both bears at the same time.

7:11 Forrest got to choose a book to read before bed, and promptly pretended to be asleep when he saw me angling for a picture. (“Did you think I was sleeping, Mama?! I was just pretending!! Did I twick you?”)

8:24 Dinner stuff put away, the kitchen and toys cleaned up, then an evening of reading (I spent the weekend with Mariana, and liked it—more on it at the end of the month when I get to my reading recap post).