Stuck in a Rut

We are 7 days into Kindergarten now. It's Thursday of week 2 and the Silers are getting this routine thing down!

Last year, day care started at 9am. And since I work from home, I was used to rolling out of bed at 8:15am, throwing Izzi some cereal and a banana, and driving her over to daycare in my pajamas (I sleep in comfy clothes, so they don't really LOOK like pajamas...uhhhh…or do they?) OK, maybe I wasn’t fooling anyone, but I digress.

So this year, Iz needs to arrive between 7:30am and 7:50am. That’s more than an hour earlier than last year! I knew we’d have a challenge with this considering us girls were typically late to 9am daycare last year. But THIS year was different. Anything after 7:50am results in a tardy slip. Which goes on her record. Which really reflects poorly on ME, not the kid. So this just wasn’t acceptable. I just assumed my poor child would be getting a LOT of those, but I've turned a new leaf. And on day 7, we are organized, on task, and getting it done. On Time!

I think Isabelle got my unfortunate trait of NOT being a morning person. I hate mornings. I'm tired, cranky, discombobulated, and need some time to wake up slowly. With our new schedule, we don't have time for that. And since I recently gave up coffee completely (!!!), I have no morning java to pick me up. I have to do it all by myself (with a little help, just the natural kind now).

So to keep us on task without any arguments, we created a new morning and evening routine, with times assigned to each task. (I get the morning routine, Ed takes care of the evening). We have all agreed to this schedule and therefore, it keeps arguments to a minimum. I run this morning routine military style, and there are no excuses for being late.

The Morning Routine poster was my creation
but don't knock the artwork. It's not my thing.

Here is a morning in the life of Jen and Izzi Siler:

6:00 AM Alarms Sound! We are allowed 15 minutes of hitting the snooze button, because, that’s just how we roll. I try to use this 15 minutes to do my Carl Sandburg stretches that were introduced to me in the Engine 2 Diet book. They really wake your muscles up and get your mind out of that morning fog. At 6:15, I’m usually going in to Izzi’s room with a gentle nudge that snooze time is over (which typically entails a 2 minute snuggle and some tickle bugs to get things moving).

6:15 – 6:45 AM Breakfast. Izzi is a slow eater in the morning, and she’s typically still in a bit of the fog too. So I knew I had to allow the most time in our schedule for eating breakfast (most important meal of the day, remember!). Her standard fare is some healthy cereal and a banana. Sometimes we vary from this with some whole grain pancakes/waffles, muffins, or some other treat. A banana is 99% of the time required (by her, not me) or it’s not considered a complete breakfast. My little monkey…

I make myself a morning smoothie packed with tons of good stuff (frozen organic berries, amazing grass green powder, banana, coconut oil, ground flaxseed, chia seeds, fish oil, you get the idea) while I check emails and get a few things done for work, and we talk about the day ahead.

At 6:45 sharp, all breakfast gets taken away. Izzi has come to understand and respect this about the morning schedule. She gets 30 minutes for breakfast (less if she’s running late getting out of bed) and at 6:45am, breakfast is over. She doesn’t even complain, or try to negotiate. It just “is what it is”.

After breakfast, we brush our teeth next. We found it’s best to do this step right after eating whilst still in our pajamas so when the inevitable toothpaste drool-spit combo gets on our shirt, it just hits our dirty PJ shirt and not our fresh clean shirt we are wearing to school that day.

We allot 15 whole minutes for tooth brushing. Her little Sonicare only takes 2 minutes, but there are so many songs and imaginary friends that also have to brush teeth, that reality requires 15 minutes.

At 7:00am, I better see her cute little butt in her room putting on her clothes. Meanwhile, the outfit has already been chosen (by her) and laid out the night before with everything she needs including undies, socks, and shoes. She only gets 15 minutes to get dressed, which I realize is NOT a lot for a 5-6 year old, but we usually have a few minutes of buffer this late in the morning from the other stages getting done quickly.

At 7:15am, it’s time to brush the mop. This step might warrant more time, actually. I threaten to chop her hair off almost daily (even though I swore I never would since I was threatened similarly as a kid and hated it). But I swear the kid must eat cotton candy on the side when I’m not looking and then rub her hands in her hair. Every day, she comes home with some kind of sticky, gooey, yuck in her hair and it’s a disaster to brush every morning (quick confession, NO my kid does not get a bath and shampoo every day. You can hand over my Mom-of-the-Year Award any time now.).

As soon as that fiasco is over, we leave the house (because, again, everything is ready and waiting by the door b/c it was packed the night before). I throw her ice pack in her lunch and we’re off.

Most days we walk or ride our bike to school. We live one mile from the school and honestly, walking takes less time than driving because of the traffic of cars, walkers, and bikers. I walk her into her classroom and get her settled (we’re allowed to do this for the first 9 weeks of school) and then I’m off to the gym for an 8:30 class.

Despite my grumblings of the early mornings, and passing out at 9:30pm every night, this new schedule has me feeling quite invigorated. I’m getting 2 hours of physical activity in the morning (granted the walk/bike to school/gym/home isn’t a high-intensity workout but it beats sitting in a car), I’m getting to the gym before work starts, and Izzi is enjoying a fruitful first few weeks of Kindergarten.

Everyone knows where they need to be, at what time, and how long they have to do each step of their morning routine. Now, if we could just work on that evening one!

The Evening Routine artwork belongs to Isabelle.
I actually think hers is much better than mine!

So, us Silers are stuck in a rut! But it's a very good thing...

Second Verse, Not Same as the First

As a follow-up to my last post of Swaddled Sweetness, our mornings have not gotten any better.

When the weekend finally arrives, we are not the kind of family to sit around the house to rest and relax after a taxing work week. In fact, it’s been 2 months since we moved into our new house and we still have a garage full of boxes that haven’t been unpacked. Who has time with so many fun things to do, places to explore, and new friends to meet!

This past weekend we had friends visit from Maryland. They left Sunday morning and we met some new friends here in Tampa. A friend of Ed’s from high school lives in Tampa now too, so he had a bunch of people over to watch football on Sunday. We met some really fun people.

On Monday morning though, we paid for our busy, hectic, super fun weekend. Everyone overslept. Our morning was more hectic than normal. Everyone was tired, and therefore cranky. Isabelle and I had one of our typical morning knock-down drag-out fights. It was a doozie too. I was yelling at her to get dressed, get her shoes on, brush her teeth, brush her hair, eat her breakfast, no she couldn’t watch a cartoon, we had to leave, we were late, ackkkkkk!

At the same time, I was running around trying to get dressed, brushed, etc.

So Monday night, we had a sit down to talk about our morning routine. Isabelle and I agreed that Monday morning was NOT very fun. It made us angry and sad that we got into such a bad fight. So we agreed that we had to do things differently. Our new routine as we laid it out Monday night:

• Isabelle’s Princess Alarm Clock will go off at 7:30 AM. If she wants to watch a cartoon that morning, then she has to wake up at that alarm time.

• She has been taught how to turn on the TV and access her recorded cartoons so she can pick what she wants to watch.

• After that one cartoon is over, she has to come wake me up (I’m usually up by this point anyway, but if I’m still hitting the snooze button, she is supposed to come rile me awake at 8:00 AM)

• At 8AM, we eat breakfast together. We have 30 minutes for breakfast so we set the timer for 20 minutes to remind us it’s time to finish up so we have time to get dressed.

• No later than 8:30AM, we each go get ourselves dressed and put our shoes on (quickly…NO playing in our room).

• Then we brush our teeth and hair.

• We should be leaving the house by 8:50AM at the latest to get to school on time.

We worked on a poster together, drew pictures for each step in our routine, talked about what happens if we miss any step in our routine (like we have to give up the one cartoon if we don't get up when the alarm goes off, or Mommy will have to pick out her outfit and get her dressed if we're behind schedule, etc.)

Fingers crossed we're on a path to a more civilized morning and maybe those few extra moments we save can be used for more swaddled sweetness.

This morning, we got through the last step of brushing and it was only about 8:40AM. I asked Isabelle if she wanted to read a book before we left since we had some spare time. She was totally shocked and thought I was joking. You mean here? At the house? Right now? Read a book???

And that's exactly what we did. We cuddled on the couch for 10 whole minutes and read a book that we haven't read in a while. It was an awesome way to send her off to school and start my workday.