Indoor recess: GoNoodle

Recess and physical education are a super important part of the day, particularly with kids spending nearly all hours inside. Today, my kids decided to stretch out their morning language arts time by writing their own stories, so language arts and math time nearly collided. I needed a break, so I figured the kids did, too.

At their elementary school, they will sometimes use GoNoodle on YouTube for indoor recess time or for rewards for positive behavior. So, when I asked the kids today how they wanted to get some energy out between language arts and math, they both chose GoNoodle.

This is their current favorite video: PopSee Ko 2.0.

It's catchy, it's short, it's kind of funny, and it encourages movement and a much-needed break. I'll admit to joining my kids in a couple rounds of this, and it lifted my spirits, too.

Check out the GoNoodle YouTube channel for lots of other songs and games that are free and encourage kids to move and play.

Coronavirus cleaning schedule

It's a Friday night, but we're all stuck inside, so what better time to write about cleaning?! With everyone home 24/7 and our homes serving as our offices, schools, restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, and maybe even dance studios and soccer fields, things are getting messy.

Many years back in 2013 when I was pregnant with our second child, I wrote about our decision to hire a cleaning service. They have consistently cleaned our home every other week since then -- every other week, until now. We will resume our cleaning service once this global pandemic declines and we are comfortable having other people in our house, but for now we are going to clean everything on our own. (And, though we decided to temporarily suspend our cleaning service, we are continuing to pay the ladies who run it so that we do not contribute to the shuttering of their small business.)

We are pampered by this cleaning service luxury, and though I've contemplated at times canceling the service because of the little voice that tells me "we should be able to handle this job ourselves," 15 days in our house without them has unequivocally proven that would be a bad idea.

We are getting the whole family involved with daily, weekly, and bi-weekly cleaning. Clearly, some of this stuff we will always do, global pandemic or not, but some of the bi-weekly chores are more difficult to achieve in the absence of extra help.

Here's the schedule we are attempting (all organized in a Google Sheet):

We are trying to use some time on Saturday mornings to recenter from the week. Last Saturday, I clearly never got to the showers nor to the dusting, so I'll try to tackle those tomorrow morning. Like everything right now, the goal is not perfection but rather holding ourselves accountable and motivating ourselves during a time when it's probably easy to let things slide. Honestly, if I vacuum and dust rather than spend an hour reading the news, that's going to be better for my house, my family, and my soul.

One small win the other week involved turning doorknob and light switch sanitizing into a little game for the kids. They had to work together to find all the doorknobs and light switches in the house, and then take turns giving each a little Lysol spray. They seemed (mostly) happy in the process, so I'll take it.

Homeschooling schedule

With one full week down (11 total days into social distancing), we have revised our homeschooling schedule. I know when many people started homeschooling, they started posting schedules. I hesitated because I wanted to set us up for realistic expectations. 

Here's what we did:

Step 1
Kid meeting -- what does your day at school normally look like? How can we do some, but not all, of that at home?

I got out a clipboard and took notes. The kids actually loved this activity last week.

Step 2
Initial test run -- we tried out our schedule for a week. It was clearly too ambitious. So, we adjusted. Because our kids have a reliable wake-up time of 7:30 a.m. and a reliable bedtime of 8 p.m., we just worked to fill in the blanks that way.

Step 3
Revised version -- here's where we are a week in. The most noteworthy adjustments are the time I gave us for each activity. Over time, I'll share what we are doing during each activity time. The general idea is that we complete our most "structured" work in the morning, and we are less structured by the afternoon.

I'm a believer in consistency as a way to keep kids feeling more secure in times of uncertainty. 

BUT, huge disclaimer!:  I do not expect us to follow this perfectly, and I don't think that's the point. It will all still be a little aspirational, and that's OK. I work from home running my own business; my husband is now completely working from home too as a teacher and school administrator. Everything about our jobs and our lives has changed dramatically in less than two weeks. There will be days when we have to get groceries, when we both have work calls at the same time, when we may be sick and need to rest, when we don't have energy, when we have "too much screentime." But on days when things are relatively calm, we will aim for this. 

Do not hold yourself to perfection, but do find a flow that helps maintain feelings of security as much as you can.

To keep us focused on our goals, I've hung this schedule on cardstock in our homeschooling area.

Continuing to wish everyone health and safety.

Leaving the house with two kids

Today I completed my first by myself out-of-house adventure with my toddler and my baby. I wanted to write it all down for myself so I can remember the steps of this quasi-routine for the future. I did not really plan ahead for today's outing, except to set my alarm, and somehow the cards fell into place.

Here's photographic evidence of our excursion:

Here, now, for your amusement, an account of my nearly two hours of preparation for a 45-minute toddler music class:

7:33 a.m. Human alarm clock (aka baby) goes off seven minutes before my iPhone is scheduled to wake me up. Oops, false alarm. Baby just let out a cry and put himself back to sleep. Still, I rush downstairs, turn on the coffee maker, get out a bottle for Natalie, fill up the diaper bag while waiting for coffee to brew. Put cereal in a snack trap for toddler, fill up a sippy cup with water and ice for toddler, grab more newborn diapers for baby, pull my wallet and keys from purse, fill up my water bottle, and add all those items to the diaper bag. Finish just in time to pour myself a cup of coffee.

7:43 a.m. Baby and toddler are still miraculously asleep, so I turn on shower and hop in. I manage to even do my hair when...

8:05 a.m. Baby is legitimately screaming now, and I'm at least partly dressed, so I go grab him.

8:10 a.m. Bring baby downstairs to nurse while I drink coffee and watch Today Show.

8:30 a.m. Baby is done and sufficiently burped and has even drifted back to sleep. Put baby in bouncer seat that is upstairs in our master bedroom. Take bottle to toddler who of course wants to read books in her crib. She reads while I put on a shirt and brush my teeth. I also lay out all needed diapers and clothes (even remember socks!) for baby in nursery and toddler in big girl room. I run downstairs, Ergo, Ergo infant insert, baby's hat, and diaper bag in tow to throw in the car during this rare moment when neither child needs me.

8:40 a.m. Time to dress toddler. She wants to take her bunny (aka her "lovie") out of her crib. Then she wants to put him back in the crib with his friends. Then she wants to analyze all the colors of all her new socks.

8:50 a.m. Baby's still sleeping, so I take toddler downstairs to put her hair in ponytails while she watches videos on her YouTube channel. I make it through "Five Little Monkeys" with her and then set up the videos on autoplay. I run downstairs to grab toddler's coat, scarf and shoes, then put them on her while she watches the "Old McDonald" video. As I rush upstairs to change the baby, I hear toddler say, "Please may I watch more videos please?" (this is a new, shocking development -- the complete sentence, polite request) and, with perfect timing, the next video in the queue comes up. Wish granted!

8:55 a.m. Baby has an especially dirty diaper and isn't pleased to be aroused from sleep. He's especially not pleased when I put his onesie over his head and cram his tiny, refusing-to-bend arms through the long sleeves. He wears a pair of socks for the first time. Those Trumpettes are amazing. They only sort of fit, but the elastic is so quality that they still don't fall off his miniature feet. I grab baby's burp cloth, and oh, yes, baby, and head downstairs.

9:07 a.m. I tell toddler it's time to leave for music class. "NO!" she whines. I say, "OK, well, then Baby Adam and I are going to music class and you can stay here." "Natalie go to music class too, please!" she whines. "Great, then follow me," I say. I open the baby gate while holding baby, toddler grabs my hand (she's finally getting the hang of going down stairs but still needs assistance at least some times). Toddler makes it down about three steps before letting go of my hand, so I go ahead and put baby in car seat. With perfect timing, by the time baby is in car seat, toddler is all the way downstairs. I get toddler into her car seat. I run back inside to get my shoes. As I'm getting into the car, I realize I'd like a scarf but decide it's too much trouble. I reach into diaper bag to hand toddler snack trap full of cereal and sippy cup right as toddler says, "Blue and red cup!" Eureka! Another wish granted. Then toddler asks for Rufus, the teddy bear who spends 90 percent of his life in our car. Rufus, though, came inside two days ago and has been residing in the living room ever since. I'm not going back inside. So, I say, "Rufus didn't make it. Sorry." Yes, I tell my toddler the teddy bear is a casualty of this morning. Ha.

9:12 a.m. I turn on the car and we're on the road, seven minutes after the arbitrary, imaginary time I gave us for leaving.

9:22 a.m. We pull into the rec center parking lot.

9:28 a.m. We have made it past the rec center front desk just in time to walk down the stairs to the music class.

Two minutes to spare! Seriously, where is my medal.

Two kids, one adult

For the past four weeks, when friends and family would ask how we were doing adjusting to life with two kids, Matt and I would respond that things were going shockingly well. Nothing has changed in that regard, except to say that life got a lot more real yesterday when Matt returned to work full time. Adam's first four weeks of life will forever be referred to as our "honeymoon" period because it really was quite easy having two adults at home managing two kids. Now that Matt's back at work and my work is picking up again, I can't say we're going to have the same easy experience.

So, I am trying to adjust to the new normal. With Natalie, the new normal came at times as a bit of a shock. I had to feed her just the same amount any newborn needs to be fed, but as a first-time mom it felt like I was just always feeding my child. Now I see breastfeeding Adam as a quiet break from the sometimes-chaos of the day. But with two kids the constant question in my mind is, "What do I do when they're both freaking out at the same time?" To this, I have no good answer, other than to say that kids are just going to cry at times, and they'll have to be patient (I know, not really something either of them understands) because one adult cannot handle two kids' every needs at every single minute of the day. I just try not to cry with them.

A particularly good moment

Of course, as I said at the beginning, the transition to two adults and two kids and now one adult and two kids has been majorly easier than I thought it would be. Here are some key points from our new life thus far:

The morning shower necessity
Somewhere between 7:30 and 8:45 a.m. Adam and I are "up for the day." The point is, newborns don't have schedules, right? And newborns sleep the majority of the day anyway, so to say that Adam will or won't be awake at any given time is a crap shoot because he's only awake for about two hours at a time max.

Although I feel about 95 percent recovered from my c-section, I am still experiencing the notorious postpartum night sweats and they absolutely suck. I am so tired of waking up (or really, being woken up) in the middle of the night in a pool of my own sweat. Add to this the fact that it's the dead of winter, so the sweats make me super cold, and I'm just unhappy in bed. The point of this is that for me right now skipping a morning shower is just not an option. As tempting as it is to get in 10 more minutes of sleep, I've been trying to orchestrate a shower for myself every morning so I can not feel disgusting.

There are mornings like yesterday when Adam wakes up at 8:25 am., does a quick feeding, and then sleeps in his crib for another hour, giving me a perfect window for taking a shower before tending to Natalie.

Then there are mornings like today when Adam wakes up at 8 a.m. just as I have started running the shower water and I have to quickly throw on a robe, change him, feed him, soothe him, and manage to get him to sit in his bouncer seat in our bathroom for 10 minutes while I get myself together.

Either way, it's not bad, and I'm not complaining. There's just no sure-fire way for me to get in a shower unless I'm ready at a second's notice when there's a moment of peace.

The obliging toddler
Of all the things in my current bag of tricks, here's the best one: my two-year old happily hangs out in her crib until 9 a.m. I know. This is insane and absolutely not normal, but I am hoping to ride this wave as long as possible. Because Natalie is so obliging, on mornings like this one I was able to feed Adam a second time while Natalie played with her (now eight) stuffed animals who have taken up residence in her crib in her new room. I handed her five books from her bookcase, and while I was in the nursery adjacent to her room I enjoyed eavesdropping on her reading Peter Rabbit and Llama Llama to herself. There's something about hearing her say "Floppsy, Mopsy and Cottontail" that makes me smile.

After Natalie's officially done with her books in her crib for the morning, I get her dressed and then bring her downstairs for a morning bottle (yes, she is still drinking milk three times a day out of a bottle -- it continues to be her final vestige of babyhood). We sit and watch a few videos from her YouTube channel while I put her hair in ponytails (still haven't gotten her a first haircut...probably should). Adam may or may not be with us during this time.

She is still a horribly picky eater, so breakfast may or may not happen, with cereal or berries or a bagel. If I suggest cream cheese on her bagel, she says "no cream cheese." If I assume that she does not want cream cheese on her bagel, based on her track record for the past two weeks, she'll of course insist that I get out that cream cheese and slather it all over her bagel. Such is life with a toddler.

Natalie oversees Baby Adam's activity gym time

In addition to showing a positive interest in what Adam's doing for at least a portion of each day, Natalie has been totally into using her art supplies, which is amazing. I just strap that child into her amazing high chair and let her go to town. I have a whole bin of art supplies stationed above our fridge since Nat's art happens exclusively in the kitchen. That bin and its contents will have to be the subject of its own blog post. What I can say now is that art supplies can keep this child happy for up to an hour at a time, and it is glorious.

Breastfeeding 2.0
Although I could probably also write a whole post about breastfeeding Adam, I'll give you a quick update.

I briefly alluded in Adam's birth story to the fact that I have such better supply this time around. This is definitely thanks to him being with me since birth. This is also likely attributed to the fact that apparently in subsequent pregnancies many women have increased breast tissue. Whatever got me to this point, I am grateful. At Adam's two-week appointment he was already a full pound over his birth weight, which means we are not concerned about growth charts the way we were forced to be when Natalie wasn't up to her birth weight after three weeks of life.

Part of my routine each day is to meet my goal of pumping twice. Some days this happens, some days this doesn't. If both kids oblige me with a mid-day nap, then pumping is something I'm able to do fairly easily after putting Adam down (he's almost always asleep after Natalie gets down for her nap and rarely before she goes down). I had to relearn the fact that I should pump after feeding Adam, not before, and not an hour or two between feedings. This is one of those facts I forgot in the span of the last two years. I also pump at night while Matt is giving Adam a bottle. We've been successfully meeting our goal of having Matt give Adam one bottle a day, right now at night, so he gets accustomed to being fed by someone besides me. Of course, this means that I had to disregard the admonition of the lactation consultant at the hospital, who cautioned me against pumping or bottle feeding before Adam hit the one-month mark. He's still a couple days shy of one month, and I've been pumping practically since the day I returned home from the hospital, and he's been getting a bottle a day since he was about a week old. Breastfeeding has not suffered as a result -- no nipple confusion here. My philosophy with pumping and bottles is definitely to start as early as possible. That means that I now have in our freezer after about four weeks of pumping as much as I ever had in the freezer throughout Natalie's entire life. This will come in handy in the next couple weeks as I resume my work schedule.

As a quick sidenote, the pump itself has turned into a symbol of the latest healthcare legislation. When Natalie was born I rented a hospital-grade pump -- the Ameda Elite -- from where I delivered and kept extending the rental until Natalie was over 10 months old. I planned to do the same thing this time around, but then I discovered that the hospital I delivered at with Natalie no longer carries that pump for rental, and the prices for Ameda pump rentals from there have increased dramatically. Remembering too that under the Affordable Care Act legislation women are able to get coverage for breast pumps, I looked into what my insurance offers. After getting conflicting information from six sources -- the HR person at my husband's work, the head nurse at my practice, two customer service reps through our insurance (whose statements contradicted what our statement of benefits says), our insurance's lactation consultant, and finally my own doctor -- I realized that because our insurance plan was "grandfathered in" and because the employer mandate does not kick in until 2015 (though the individual coverage mandate kicked in this year) I was going to get zilch in the way of breast pump coverage.

Wanting to have a breast pump at our house the moment I got home from the hospital, I researched online breast pump rental options. The best deal I could find came from the AmedaDirect website, which allows users to rent an Ameda Elite pump for 6 months at $240. This offer also includes free shipping (normally $15) and a free accessory kit (normally $50). This is the best deal, as monthly rentals run $50 and do not cover shipping or the accessory kit. So, we're paying for my pump rental out-of-pocket with no hope of reimbursement, but in the grand scheme this is fairly cheap. I know I could buy a single-user pump for the same cost (or even less) but I just love this breast pump. Yes, loving a breast pump is an oxymoron I suppose, but hey, it's super-duper efficient so it takes me just minutes to pump a lot of milk. Renting from the AmedaDirect site has been really easy -- I did not, as the site suggests, have to send in the rental agreement via snail mail but instead scanned and emailed the completed form, and then the pump shipped out the same day I sent the email, arriving at our house within three days of placing the order.

The dual nap
Natalie has been taking one nap per day since right around the time she turned one year old. She goes down for this nap sometime between 12:30 and 1 on a typical day. I've been trying to get Adam to oblige me with a solid mid-day nap at the same time. Yesterday he did not, so I held him for the two and a half hours Natalie was sleeping. Not bad, but not productive. Today, though, he's contentedly snoozing in his room while Natalie tries to fall asleep. Whether Natalie really falls asleep or not during her nap is a little up in the air lately. She used to religiously sleep for about two and a half hours for her nap, falling asleep within moments of me leaving her room, but now she seems to be entertaining herself and taking an hour or more to fall asleep. She's clearly tired when I leave her, but she's no doubt experiencing a little sleep interference thanks to her brother's arrival (they do share a wall, after all). Whether she sleeps or not, though, Natalie is quiet and content in her crib, and she needs this quiet time in order to make it happily to bed time.

When the dual nap occurs, I can eat lunch using both my hands. If there's no dual nap then I need to figure out what I can easily eat in stages, often while standing. Thankfully, the dual nap occurs more often than not.

Because Natalie stays in her crib until at least 3 p.m., and because Matt is usually able to be home from work between 3 and 3:30, the afternoon is pretty manageable. It will not be as easy in a couple weeks when I resume my afternoon and evening work schedule, as Matt will have to rush home, walk the dogs and be ready for a dual-baby hand off within a matter of minutes before I have to get to work, but he will figure out a way to make it work just as I'm learning to care for two kids during the first half of the day.

Nighttime "routine"
Although we're raising Adam in almost an identical way to how we raised Natalie as a newborn, here's something that's different: Natalie stayed in her bassinet next to our bed for about six weeks, whereas Adam spent a little more than two weeks next to our bed before we decided it was time to make the switch. I am way less concerned about whether or not he's breathing (I watched Natalie in the middle of the night like a hawk) because I know that worrying isn't going to change anything. That helped making his transition to his bassinet in his nursery less difficult for me. Adam? He did not notice the change at all. I'm glad we did this as early as we did. I'm sleeping better, Matt's sleeping better, and Adam wasn't affected positively or negatively -- he's just a typical newborn.

One aspect of newborn life that Matt and I kind of forgot is that newborns don't have much of a routine when it comes to sleep and "bedtime" (what is bedtime to a newborn? Isn't their life one perpetual bedtime?). So, we tried a couple weeks ago to get Adam to go to sleep for the night starting around 8 p.m. so we could enjoy some evening adult time. After a few nights of doing what Matt correctly dubbed "chasing our own tails" as it would take a couple hours to get Adam to go to sleep, we finally realized we needed to accept the fact that for at least the next few months we don't get an evening break. We have to trade off who's eating dinner when and live with the fact that one, if not both, of us will be eating cold food.

With Matt back at work, though, we have been trying to change Adam for bed and give Adam a bottle sometime between 9:30 and 10. Ideally, Adam would fall asleep after having a 3-ounce bottle, and then he'd stay asleep for at least a few hours. But, nights like last night remind me that Adam is most content breastfeeding. So, he took the bottle, but then he fussed, and fussed, and fussed. Traditional soothing methods did not calm him down, so I resorted to doing what I do not like to do and breastfed him for comfort rather than nutrition. He barely fed -- because of course he was totally full -- but he did fall asleep within a matter of minutes.

So last night Adam slept for 3.5 hours, then woke up at 2 a.m., breastfed for 15 minutes, and immediately fell back asleep in his bassinet for another two hours. He woke up at 4:30 a.m., breastfed again for another 15 minutes, but wouldn't fall back asleep in his bassinet. Not wanting to experience what we did a couple weeks ago when it would take him at least two hours at a time to fall asleep each time he'd wake up in the middle of the night, I resorted to putting him to sleep in his swing. He slept contentedly in there for another 3.5 hours. This is, for the record, one of his best nights of sleep. Although I don't like to put him anywhere but his bassinet at night, I need to remember -- as my current rereading of my favorite baby book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, reminds me -- that there's really no such thing as establishing bad habits for a baby under four months old. A line I reread last night said to "do whatever is necessary to get your baby to sleep." Duly noted!

Sometimes I wonder if Adam is going to be a good sleeper or not. It's way too early to tell. But I am meticulously tracking his eating and sleeping habits on my iBaby Log app just as I did with Natalie. I can still see all of Natalie's data from two years ago. It's reassuring to see that Adam and Natalie are so far practically identical in their newborn sleep habits. In fact, Adam wins bonus points for the fact that he's willing to take at least one nap a day in his bassinet in the nursery, whereas Natalie basically never did that for the first six weeks of her life, and rarely even took naps in her crib before she was four months old.

Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses?
I'm writing this blog post on a good day after a really good night, so I know it sounds like my life is easy and everything is perfect. And my life is pretty easy and I am pretty lucky as well. But I've also just spared you from another post I drafted on a really crappy day. It sounded really complain-y, so I'm happy to have something real but less annoying to share.

Also, I have yet to venture out of the house with the two kids by myself. That experiment will take place later this week when we (attempt to) attend Natalie's music class. We have done plenty of family-of-four outings, and Matt is getting the hang of the Baby Bjorn carrier we borrowed from our friends (I'm still rocking the Ergo, but Matt's not comfortable getting that on by himself, hence the Bjorn loan). So, for now, while I contentedly hang out at home with two kids, I feel like I have things somewhat under control and will wait to tackle the next challenge of the outside the house adventure in a couple days.

Hiring a cleaning service

Speaking of exporting out help for improving our home, we have in the last several months hired a cleaning service for the first time, and let me tell you have much it has revolutionized our lives. One day over the summer I could tell that Matt had reached his limit with the gross-out factor of our bathrooms when he, while holding a flyer that had just been placed in our front door, said, "I'm calling this service for an estimate." We get about 2-3 cleaning service flyers a week shoved into our storm door. In the past I've always immediately taken them to the recycling bin, thinking, "Who hires a cleaning service?"

The answer: many, many people hire cleaning services. Having grown up, though, with the mentality that only the very wealthy or those who are incapable of basic household tasks hire cleaning services, I always vowed I would never be one of those people...

Deciding to hire a cleaning service
...But then our bathrooms would sit uncleaned not for weeks, but for months, and the mold would build and the task of finally breaking down and cleaning them became too daunting. Like anything that's allowed to fester, the problem just compounds itself.

Although I have been and continue to be an organized person, I have to be realistic about my limitations. I entered parenthood with an idealistic cleaning schedule that actually worked for a while, but then I started working more and my baby became a toddler (and toddlers are more time-consuming than babies, or at least that's been my experience). I have an ideal partner who truly splits household tasks and errands with me 50/50, yet between our jobs, our child care, and our desire to spend time with each other and maintain social lives, there are not enough hours in a day to get our house up to our level of cleanliness without spending all our otherwise unaccounted for hours cleaning.

What helped me mentality break away from the "no cleaning services for me!" philosophy of my childhood was putting the financial costs into perspective. Yes, a cleaning service is a luxury, and I know it is one that not everyone can afford. Putting it in terms of your personal hourly rate, though, might help you make the move if you're on the fence. How much is an hour of your time worth? How many hours does it take you to clean your home, even when you split the tasks with someone else? What can you do with the time you could gain by exporting out at least some of the cleaning duties in your house?

Negotiating a rate and a plan
After a quick consultation at our house, we were able to hire a cleaning service to come to our house once every two weeks. Four ladies show up and spend between one and one-and-a-half hours at our home (which translates to 4-6 woman hours that I am not cleaning!). Because we still devote a chunk of each day to basic household maintenance, and our two giant dogs' shedding habits necessitate that Matt vacuums our house 2-3 times per week, we figured we did not need every single service offered. We asked if the cleaning service would clean our four (! ridiculous, I know) bathrooms, dust the entire house, and clean all our wood floors for $75 every two weeks. The service's owner accepted our offer. Fortunately, though, the women who come every other week do so much more than what we signed on for -- they clean all baseboards and doors, vacuum the sofas and stairs thoroughly (no easy task thanks to our dogs), and clean the interior of all windows. They do not touch the kitchen, because I do enough daily kitchen maintenance and a bi-weekly deep cleaning so it's not necessary.

Having these women come to clean our house every two weeks is amazing on so many levels, but one reason I especially like it is that it keeps me to a reasonable bi-weekly cleaning schedule of my own.

Bi-weekly kitchen cleaning
Because our cleaning ladies usually come every other Thursday, I've added a bi-weekly appointment in my Google calendar on Wednesday nights to clean the kitchen. I make this my sole duty because Matt contributes his fair share of domestic goodness with frequent house vacuuming, grocery shopping, and cooking. Of course, I wash dishes and wipe surfaces every day, but every other week I now perform a deep cleaning of the kitchen that makes me feel like a domestic rock star.

 

Here's my kitchen cleaning order of operations:

1) Wipe down all granite countertops. I say granite to share with you the fact that in the last year I've discovered the wonder of Method Daily Granite & Marble cleaner and I love it. I've linked to soap.com because that's the place where I find the best price (though I always stock my cart with plenty of bottles so I can earn free shipping).

2) Clean stovetop, inside toaster oven, and coffee pot.

3) Refill any canisters sitting on our countertops (cereal, sugar, coffee, flour, salt, rice) and wipe down stainless steel canisters with Method Stainless Steel Cleaner.

4) Clean out and reorganize fridge. Wipe down shelves before restocking with food. Update the Our Groceries app with any items we've run out of (or will run out of soon).

5) Reorganize pantry as needed, restock any staples (oil, vinegar, salt, pepper), and further update Our Groceries list with needed pantry items.

6) Go over our white cabinets to clean up spills and marks with a Clorox wipes and/or Scotch Brite erasers as needed.

7) Wipe down dishwasher, fridge, and faucet/sink with Method Stainless Steel Cleaner.

8) Wipe down the highchair and highchair placemat.

I was not doing nearly this kind of deep kitchen cleaning before, so I am thrilled to be able to keep our kitchen this clean. By cleaning the kitchen thoroughly the night before the cleaning ladies arrive, I get all the crumbs and dirt off the surfaces and onto the floor, where they'll be vacuumed and polished away the next morning.

Other business that's getting taken care of...
So, yeah, not only am I performing a deep cleaning of the kitchen every other week, but having a cleaning service has also freed up time for some items that were not getting done as quickly as I'd hoped they would. These include:

• Filing -- instead of allowing a pile, or several piles, to build up before I broke out the shredder/file cabinet, I file items away at least every other day.
• Laundry -- I've been doing a good job getting Natalie's laundry done one week and mine done the next, as I originally set out to do when she was about six months old, but doing laundry is the easy part -- folding is another story. Laundry would go unfolded often for several days. Now I make sure that I fold the laundry the day it's done.
• Cleaning outlet covers and switch plates -- These seem to get dirty so quickly, and they are not something the cleaning ladies cover, so I try go over them every other week.
• Changing the sheets -- We are not the kind of people who change our sheets every week. Instead, the bi-weekly cleaning schedule gives me a reminder that I should change the sheets at least within a couple days of the cleaning ladies' visit.
• Organizing kids' clothes -- As cliche as it is, kids really do grow incredibly fast. I feel like I am constantly sorting through drawers and bins for Natalie (and now preparing for her little brother). I like to make sure that anything in Natalie's dresser and closet actually fits her so that Matt and grandparents/babysitters won't dress Nat in something embarrassingly outgrown.

Of course, our world is about to get rocked come January, so who knows if our present household maintenance routines will still work for us then, but for now we love the day once every two weeks when for one perfect moment our home is impeccably clean. This would be impossible if we did not have a cleaning service.

Household schedule reality check

This blog keeps me honest and helps me set realistic goals for myself, so I thought it was time to reflect on my baby-friendly household maintenance plan I established back in June.

The good news is that I am mostly sticking to it. The bad news is that I hate to clean bathrooms. I really, really hate cleaning bathrooms.

To be a little more reflective, though....

Writing down a Monday through Friday "schedule" has been useful in giving me just one or two tasks to focus on per day outside of all the baby care activities that consume so much of my time. I definitely feel less overwhelmed.

Even though I do not have a full-time job outside the house right now, I still like to give our family weekends that are as errand-free and chore-free as possible. I'm happy to be a little more insane during the week if it means freedom during the weekend. Also, in reality, there is almost always something I didn't get to during the week that needs to get taken care of during the weekend, so it's nice to have that flexibility.

I have needed to rearrange what days I accomplish different tasks. Tuesday are particularly busy around our house, so I should not make Tuesday the day I dust or clean the bathrooms, since those tend to be more time consuming. The point is, though, that no matter what day I accomplish something, with a schedule generally in mind I am more likely to consistently take care of tasks that need to get done every week (or realistically, every two weeks).

Handling all the dog hair that is inevitably floating around our house is such a Sisyphean task, but a schedule for dusting and vacuuming at least ensures that even if everything does not get accomplished when I want it to, at least it happens roughly around the time I want it to. And that is fine. I am horrible, however, at ever remembering to Furminate the dogs these days. Poor dogs.

Oh, and always dust before vacuuming. Always.

So, if you're tired of looking at your house and wondering where to begin with trying to keep it presentable, I'm a believer in this personalized schedule idea. It will help keep you from losing your mind and maybe cut the dog hair around your house down by half.

My routine with a 7-month old

I've written about Natalie's sleep schedule before as well as the unpredictable nature of life with a baby that makes the concept of a routine challenging. Although I am destined to jinx it by writing about it, for roughly the past month I've finally felt like I've got a reasonably set routine with Natalie.

I still divide my day into pre-nap and post-nap chunks. Thankfully, around the time Natalie turned 7 months old she went from three naps a day to two, and that has made a huge difference in my general happiness. Fewer naps = increased ability to get out of the house. Incidentally, the 7-month mark is also right when Natalie started crawling, so she is at last reasonably happy playing a little by herself on the floor with me nearby.

I'm always curious about the routines of babies and stay-at-home parents, so here's what my present daily routine looks like.

Wake up routine, pre-nap 1: 7:30-10:30 a.m.

• Natalie wakes up between 7:30 and 8:30.
• Get my breakfast ready before getting her from her crib (I typically feed myself while feeding her).
• Change her and breastfeed her immediately.
• Read some books together because this is when she's most quiet and agreeable.
• Play in the Exersaucer/on the floor. She is most agreeable to independent play this time of day.
• Go down for nap 1 around 10-10:30.

Post-nap 1: 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.

• Natalie typically wakes up from nap 1 around 11:30 a.m. No matter what, nap 1 is consistently one hour long. During that hour I've usually taken a shower, done a couple chores, read some internets...
• Upon waking up from nap 1 breastfeed her immediately.
• Feed her solid meal 1 of the day.
• This is the best time of day for activities outside the house. On those rare days when I don't have something planned outside the house I take Natalie for a walk or run some errands with her. Staying home all day is unpleasant for her and me.
• Go down for nap 2 around 2-2:45.

Post-nap 2, pre-bedtime: 4-7 p.m.

• Natalie typically wakes up from nap 2 around 4 p.m. No matter what, nap 2 is consistently longer than nap 1, usually one hour 15 minutes or one-and-a-half hours long. During that time I've usually eaten a late lunch, done some more household maintenance and maybe even a little something I enjoy, like reading a book.
• Upon waking up from nap 2 breastfeed her immediately.
• By this time Matt is typically home from work, so we try to go on a long dog walk if we don't have other commitments. Although I'm more likely to schedule excursions during the post-nap 1 phase of the day, we do sometimes makes plans for the late afternoon.
• Feed her solid meal 2 of the day with Matt, if possible, to establish the concept of family dinner time.
• Try to read to her some more, if she'll take it.
• Play in the Exersaucer/on the floor. This is the time of day when Natalie does best when we're interacting with her a lot.
• Start the bedtime routine by 6:45 p.m. We still give her a bath every other day unless she seems particularly messy or we've done something out of the ordinary, like gone to the pool that day. Once she's changed for the night she's either breast or bottle fed and then rather immediately falls asleep.
• Natalie is usually asleep by 7 p.m. but almost always by 7:30 p.m. at the latest.

On this schedule, Matt and I find ourselves eating dinner on the later side, usually around 8 p.m. We get in a couple hours of together time before it's time for Matt to turn in for the night in preparation for his early morning wake up for work.

Helping Natalie transition to a two-nap-a-day schedule has not only allowed us greater flexibility in making plans, but it has also allowed Natalie to start falling asleep for naps and bedtime more quickly. Although getting her to sleep usually has never been a challenge, the crying is even less now than it was before, which is probably a good signal that she's appropriately tired when it's time for sleep and she's struck a good balance for herself between sleep time and awake time.

Natalie turns 8 months old next week, and at that point I want to begin feeding her three solid meals a day. So, her routine will adjust slightly with the addition of "breakfast," but hopefully the routine will not change much.

New household schedule

I view this blog as a way to keep myself in line. If it helps anyone else, that's great, but there's nothing like some good ole public accountability to encourage me to stick to my goals. So, I'm trying something new, a Monday through Friday task list that I'm starting this week and hoping to continue (no doubt with modifications) through the end of my leave of absence from work in August 2013.

I'm doing this new system now for a few reasons:
1) Though I used to pat myself on the back for just emptying the dishwasher in a given day, soon I will have had a baby for half a year (!) and I think it's about time to step up my game.

2) A mom friend of mine helped push me in this direction as she shared her attempts at getting a couple things done a day.

3) I have a tendency to get hyper focused and want to clean the entire house and run 15 errands all in one day and then not do anything for a week. That's not only unhealthy, but it's just impossible now. By giving myself a couple tasks to complete per day I hope I'll feel less overwhelmed. I also just need to be honest with myself and what I can realistically accomplish.

4) I've felt less of an urge to keep our house clean since Natalie's birth because, you know, I've been kind of busy and all, but as I spend more time at home I have increasing opportunities to see the dust bunnies or, more realistically, the piles of dog hair everywhere. Oh my god, I am covered in dog hair and it disgusts me. It is seriously taking away from my happiness even though I am an otherwise completely happy person with lots to celebrate.

OK, so here goes:

Mondays
Meal planning and grocery shopping!

Tuesdays
A rotating task list...
One week: Clean the bathrooms.
Following week: Dust.

Wednesdays
Vacuum
Laundry...
One week: Natalie's laundry
Following week: My laundry

Thursdays
A rotating task list...
One week: Wood floors and walls/doors (by this I mean get out the Magic Eraser to handle any obvious dirt/marks that have accumulated)
Following week: Windows and sheets

Fridays
Kitchen wipe down -- counter tops, stainless steel appliances, check fridge for expired food, etc.

Every other day....wash a load of cloth diapers
On those days, like today, that I do not have to wash diapers I will dedicate that time to Furminating the dogs, which will hopefully help me maintain my sanity a little longer between vacuuming sessions.

A few important points about this list:
1) This is a "good enough" list. While my standards of cleanliness are maybe greater than those of the average person, experience would indicate that they are not greater than those of the average reader of an organization/home maintenance blog. So, when I say "windows" every other Thursday, I don't mean I'll be cleaning every single window in my house, but rather I'll attack those heavily trafficked windows (the front storm door and the bay window in the living room where the dogs hang out come to mind) and when the spirit moves me on a rare occasion I'll get to other windows.

2) On a similar note, it may gross some people out to only change your bedsheets once every two weeks, but that's good enough for us.

3) Matt will assist with this list. He still does the majority of the vacuuming in our house (and DJ Roomba continues to assist with keeping the main level of our house tidy), and he does all the cooking. Although I've taken on more grocery shopping than I have in the past, he continues to do a significant portion of grocery shopping and did, for example, go to both Wegmans and Costco last night while I was spending time with Natalie and putting her to bed.

4) I am already resisting the urge to be unrealistic in my expectations and deviate from this schedule. For example, I can see right now that the fridge and the coffeemaker both could use a wipe down, but I am resisting the urge to add that to my list of responsibilities today because I know I'll do it Friday. Or, today's Tuesday, and the bathrooms could use cleaning and the house could use dusting, but I'll have to pick one and save the other one for next week. It is oddly liberating, at least as far as a schedule can be liberating.

5) Obviously there will be other things I will do each day, some mini-projects (right now figuring out what to do with my classroom that it still packed up in my car will be a priority), but overall I'm most concerned about maintaining the schedule I've had going for the last few months that includes a social activity or excursion every day to introduce Natalie to new people, environments and activities. That is more important than a clean house.

Oh, and when I go back to work full time I think we're going to have to hire a cleaning service, because there's no way I could do this schedule, work full time, care for a baby, and still have some fun. Major props to you if you can!

New parenting 101: Redefining the word "schedule"

Everyone warns you before you have a baby to "get your sleep now because you won't once the baby arrives!" I assume the implication is that you can somehow stockpile your sleep. Well, obviously you can't. The good news for me, though, is that because I was (in retrospect) getting such horrible sleep throughout much of my pregnancy and it was at its worst in the final two months, I am actually getting better sleep now than I have in almost a year.

What people had warned me about that is true, however, is that I'm having to seriously redefine my waking hours and the concept of a schedule and productivity.

I used to be able to make a list of five relatively substantial tasks that I could tackle in a couple hours on a Saturday morning. Now I feel like that same list takes me at least a week to complete. I figured this would be true as we prepared for Natalie's arrival, but I don't think the degree to which it would be true struck me until last week when Matt went back to work.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about this fact; instead, I'm actually kind of embracing this new lifestyle and the less-intense level of expectations that comes along with it. Like I was telling my friend the other week, I have a to-do list, but the good news is that on any given day I don't actually have to do anything besides sustain the life of a tiny human (no big deal!). It's rather freeing.

Still, in an effort to keep myself goal-oriented I am keeping two running lists. One list contains everything I'd like to get accomplished eventually, which I'll define as in the next several months. The other list is my daily to-do list.

I've written before about my non-negotiable daily tasks. These still hold true with some slight adjustments. Here's generally what I always have on my to-do list:

1) Wake up and immediately make bed before Natalie starts fussing. Bonus points if I can put away last night's dishes before she wakes up, too.

2) Eat breakfast while doing the first nursing of the day.

3) Shower and change clothes.

4) Eat lunch.

5) Pump 1-2 times per day.

6) Make sure I'm giving Natalie lots of stimulation: reading, activity gym time, tummy time, toy time, etc.

This may seem absurd, but making the bed, showering, changing clothes and making sure I've fed myself well during daylight hours are critical to my daily routine and my sense of sanity. I could stay in my PJs all day, but that would make me feel pathetic (I know because I've done it a couple times already).

Additionally, so many of my hours are taken up by nursing that it's easy to overlook that as one of my most essential duties right now as well.

I also keep having to constantly remind myself that interacting with Natalie while she's awake is an important part of my job right now. Because she doesn't give much feedback yet, it's sometimes easy to forget that age-appropriate stimulation is still important to her development. The amount of hours she's awake during daylight hours is starting to increase, and she's hinting at the very beginnings of some social smiling, so hopefully soon she'll seem more like a little person than a little blob.

Each day I add a couple more items to that day's to-do list, and I am not satisfied unless I complete them. These change daily and I write them down to motivate myself to get them done. I am giving myself credit for accomplishing mundane tasks that before I did not even think of as accomplishments.

For example, yesterday I wrote three thank you notes and I mailed a gift at the post office. Those were the only two to-dos I required myself to accomplish yesterday on top of my regular to-do list.

Today my to-do list includes washing the new bed sheets I picked up over the weekend, emptying the dishwasher, giving Natalie a bath, and finishing reading a set of short stories. (Note about the sheets: I picked up a set of cotton percale bed sheets two years ago once I discovered that these are supposedly the longest-lasting kind of sheets. They really are holding up well, and I decided we needed another set because I am disgusted by how much I am continuing to sweat at night and how frequently I am washing sheets as a result. Postpartum night sweats are no joke. I am ready for that to end -- will it end, or am I doomed to be a sweat monster for the rest of my life? Moms, you tell me.)

As I hope you can tell, by giving myself significant credit for emptying the dishwasher I have clearly downgraded my definition of daily productivity.

And that is fine.

First parenthood-inspired organizational blunder

I have a whole host of blog posts in the works on topics such as what to take to the hospital (in retrospect), c-section recovery, NICU culture and blessings in disguise, gear to have on hand for a newborn, etc., but for now I'll interrupt my "regularly scheduled post" to share this little gem.

The long and short of it is that for the basically the first time in my life I missed a deadline. Specifically, my car is up for its state inspection every December, and this year's inspection just happened to take place on Jan. 24 (this Monday). Whoops.

The best part of the story is that I did not even realize (nor did Matt, for what it's worth) that my car was well overdue for its inspection until we took it to a repair shop on Monday. You may recall that there is only one place in my 2003 Mazda Protege where our daughter's car seat will fit -- that would be directly behind the front passenger's seat. Unfortunately, this is also adjacent to the only door in the car in which the power lock is broken. After taking about two car rides as a family we decided enough is enough, we'd have to suck it up and pay the $250 to have the door taken apart and the power lock fixed. (Fortunately, this was $200 cheaper than the estimate we'd been given at our usual auto-repair shop, so we drove across town to the cheaper repair shop, newborn in tow.)

Of course, when you drop off your car for any maintenance, the repair people inevitably have about 20 other items they find that you could fix. In my case, the fact that they caught that I needed a state inspection was legitimately important. The fact that my car would not have passed the inspection due to nearly dead brakes was also slightly important. And the fact that I legitimately needed maintenance such as a transmission fluid flush also ranks up there on the importantness scale. Matt and I plan to keep my car alive for as long as possible, so we're viewing routine maintenance as rather critical. His car (a two-door) will be the one to go when it's time to upgrade.

So, $900 worth of car repairs four days after bringing our newborn home from the hospital wasn't what we'd bargained for, but I suppose that's just what happens sometimes.

And now, of course, inside our house the basement door is having trouble locking and unlocking thanks to the cold weather, and two of the toilets in our house that have never caused us problems in five years are starting to run whenever they gosh darn feel like it. It's amazing that none of these things happened when I was waiting for Natalie to arrive.

Two birds, one stone

Despite the fact that I teach my students lessons about how to avoid cliches (like the plague...ha, ha), I still think there's no more fitting way to describe the philosophy that guides my life these days than the adage, "Kill two birds with one stone."

I've already told you that I don't really understand the concept of multitasking. Honestly. I cannot divide my attention. Sure, I have perfected my peripheral vision as a teacher so that I can see those kids misbehaving in the corner even while I'm intently working with a small group of students, and I can call those little misbehavers out without batting an eye. Sure, I can have a seemingly endless line of students coming into my office, and I can almost anticipate all the reasons why each one is there and respond to their questions immediately and with precision. But I can't have a phone conversation and try to accomplish just about anything else at the same time (nor would I want to), and I can't switch back and forth between activities without screwing something up.

So, this concept of trying to "kill two birds with one stone" is really my saving grace.

How do I apply this concept on a daily basis?

Well, I try to save errands up until I need to go to one store to make several purchases. (Along with that, I try to map out my errand route to go to stores in a physical order that makes sense based on each store's location, saving time and gas.)

I went to a happy hour with some colleagues whom I a) wanted to see and b) needed to share some work-related info with. Mixing business with personal? Perhaps, but not really, since we are all connected through our jobs (and, of all jobs, teaching is a highly personal career).

Another teacher and I needed to make some big school-related purchases, so we teamed up and called our companies together, keeping our customer service reps on the phone all at once to maximize efficiency for both of us.

And you already know about how I try to apply this strategy to conquer all the stairs in our house through the up and down rule.

I know this is a strategy most of us adopt on a daily basis, but lately I've felt like it's been my greatest organizational strategy. Yes, it requires a little extra thought and a little extra planning to make the "kill two birds with one stone" idea a reality, but if I didn't make this strategy work for me I probably wouldn't get anything important done.

Stay busy to stay productive

Lately I've felt busier than I've ever felt in my life. Maybe it's because of my class schedule this year, or that the longer I teach, the more responsibilities I take on. I have few moments to spare, and when I have those few moments of freedom I really relish the experience.

Even though I am (too) busy these days, I am super productive, and I don't mean productive in a multi-tasking kind of way. (I'm still not quite sure what multi-tasking is because I can only focus on one activity at once, but I know multi-tasking must be bad for you.) In fact, I am more productive in the fall than I am in the summer. Although this seems counter-intuitive -- shouldn't I get more done when I have more time? -- I actually work better under the restrictions of a schedule than I do when given the freedom of flexibility. That flexibility sometimes feels endless or even daunting, and it sometimes causes me to lose that edge that drives me to complete projects in a timely manner.

I think about this as a teacher and try to relate this experience to my students. Many of them get their best grades during the season(s) in which they play a sport. Participating in athletics forces them to prioritize their time. It gives them the structure to stay focused. I know this applies to me.

I'm curious: does this concept hold true for you? Are you most productive when you have the most time commitments on your plate?

Tip 11: Google calendar

I used to be a big proponent of the day planner or the hand-written calendar. I like tangible items, checklists, items to cross off. That is, I used to be, until I discovered...

Tip 11: Sign up for Google calendar

Most people I know already use Gmail as their primary personal e-mail program, so adding on the perks of Google calendar is a small endeavor with a lot of perks. Here's why I love it:

• Calendar views: You can see your day's agenda, one week, or one month.
• Calendar sharing options: This is probably the best aspect of this program. You can choose which users have access to your calendar and vice versa. So, Matt and I share calendars. All of his items are in blue and mine are in pink (cute, I know). When we want to make plans, it's great to see both his agenda and mine simultaneously. There are some communal calendars to choose from as well, such as one that gives you all US holidays.
• Scheduling events: You can create one-time events, but you can also create recurring events. So, our dogs get their monthly medicine each month on the 15th, so I set that up as a recurring event, or at work I have meetings that happen once a month, and I can schedule them accordingly. I love the "set it and forget it" concept.
• Importing events: The Google calendar program allows you to take invitations, such as Evites, and automatically plugs the event information into your calendar.
• Event reminders: Much like the Outlook calendar, the Google calendar sends you an alert when an event is about to take place.

Like all things organization, the trick to using Google calendar is to put in your upcoming events as soon as you find out about them. Thankfully, Matt is good about this as well. And, Droids come fully equipped with all Google programs, so it's easy to have my calendar on me at all times. Yes, Google is taking over the world and my life, but I am kind of OK with that.

Next up...organizing all your cords!