Day 8 - Routine
2020 March 25
Wednesday
10:15pm:
I have been trying to instill a bit of routine into our days to keep things running smoothly. We are a family of eight — without a routine, things descend into chaos quickly. So here is what my days look like lately:
I get up, I start a pot of oatmeal for the youngest four kids, I tidy the counter. My husband has been awake for awhile — a side effect of still being on “commuting time” — and has fed himself and had coffee. He is already at work at the table in our bedroom when I get up.
I start heating a pot of water to make coffee or tea for myself, and start formatting the previous night’s diary entry for posting to my blog. I like to work at the kitchen table.
When the oatmeal is ready, I dish it into bowls — plain with blueberries for the baby, brown sugar and blueberries for #Kid5, brown sugar and strawberries for #Kid4, and just brown sugar for #Kid3. I feed the youngest, and leave the other three eating at the table together, usually listening to the Frozen 2 soundtrack — a current favorite in our house.
I make my cup of tea or coffee and sit down at the kitchen table to start working. The silence is punctuated with enthusiastic sounds of singing from the dining room, sometimes requiring a bit of refereeing to ensure they’re not too loud for my husband who is working directly upstairs.
I finish my post and hit publish. Then I write my list of stuff for the day — I have a page for each day, broken into sections for “done”, “to do”, “supper”, and now I’ve added “school”. I’m not a slave to the list, but it keeps me on track for what I’d like to get done, and gives me the satisfaction of crossing things off as they are completed. Now that everyone is home together, the lists are longer — “dishes” are on there twice, and “baking bread” is almost daily.
“School” is a loose list of “watch a BBC nature show in French”, “20 minutes on Prodigy”, and “have #Kid3 read to #Kid4”. Sometimes it also includes “have #Kid3 help measure bread ingredients” and “get #Kid4 to colour”. Sometimes it simply means the kids do puzzles all morning. It’s a forgiving list, and primarily intended to keep them in a routine of starting a task and then finishing it. It also buys me a bit of quiet so I can do something else with #Kid5 and the baby — read a book, cuddle on the couch, nurse the baby, coax them into naps.
Then it’s lunchtime.
Lunch is more involved now. I’m trying to make sure there are leftovers from the night before for my husband and I — the kids have sandwiches or pasta or flatbread pizza. We should have bought more mozzarella — I add it to my ongoing grocery list for when we stock up in three weeks.
After lunch, I start measuring ingredients into the bread maker — one of our current favorites is this Molasses Brown Bread. Six kids go through a lot of bread, so I’m making it almost every day right now. Then I empty the dishwasher and run the first load of dishes.
This is the point in the day where I throw a video on the tv for the kids. Netflix has hours and hours of BBC documentaries, which are popular here, but I also put on My Little Pony, Paw Patrol, and others because I can switch the language track to French. #Kid4 likes to tell me when she recognizes a word. The BBC ones are my favorite, though, because Sir David Attenborough’s voice is so soothing and calming for my nerves.
Now it’s time for a load of laundry or other general tidying. And nursing the baby, and hopefully convincing her that she’d love another nap before I’m onto supper prep.
I take my time with supper prep. The teens have been up awhile by this time, and #Kid2 is excellent at keeping things under control so I can get some quiet. Sometimes #Kid4 will decide to do puzzles, or the others will play video games or draw. In the kitchen, I listen to music or watch a show, and zone out of what’s happening in the news.
This is my “me time”.
One of the older three kids helps to set the table, and we call everyone to eat. We bought an antique farmhouse table in the fall — the biggest I’ve ever seen, at 96” when fully extended.
Our table is always fully extended, and I enjoy seeing my family sitting around it. Supper time is boisterous here, with discussions, jokes, some fighting among the younger ones, and laughter over #Kid6 trying new foods. One of the kids who didn’t set the table helps me clear it. Then it’s time for the second run of dishes in the dishwasher.
Bedtime for the younger ones here is generally done by one of the older three — the younger kids love this, and there is a rota. Sometimes they ask for someone out of turn, and #Kid3 is the best storyteller of us all, according to his little sisters. After the girls are in bed, #Kid3 likes to hang out with me and the baby on the couch watching a show or talking until it’s time for him to head up.
And then I get a few minutes to myself again, with a sleeping baby on my lap. I check the news. I scroll Facebook. I scan Twitter.
I head to bed, promising not to check the news until tomorrow, but.. then it’s 2am, and I can’t sleep because I’m worried or I had a bad dream. So I lie there, mindlessly playing Words With Friends or Panda Pop, or checking the news, listening to my husband and 11 mos old sleeping next to me.
It’s a routine. Routines are reliable. Routines are a structure upon which I can construct my day and put one foot in front of the other.