Day in the Life - Fall 2013 - Weekend Edition

Time for another Day in the Life as hosted by Navigating the Mothership. This time I've decided to do both a weekend day and a work day (look for  another post). Nothing exciting happened with my work day, but I thought it would be good to document now that I am working from home (future post to come on that, eventually). I love doing these and being able to look back over what our previous day in the life posts entail.

Sunday, October 13th, 2013

Riley is 3 years 8 months

As usual, I wake multiple times during the night. The first two times are the usual. Get up, go to the bathroom and fall right back to sleep.

At 5:48, I wake enough to think "I can't believe I slept until May". Seriously, that's what I thought. I felt like I slept forever and I can't figure out why Riley hasn't woken us up. I'm sure it's at least 7:30 and am surprised that it's not even 6 yet. Luckily, I fall back asleep.

 

6:48 - I'm happy I get to sleep in until this hour since I totally conked out at about 9:50 the night before. Even though I woke several times I feel like I got a full night's sleep. I probably could have slept longer than I did, but Riley woke up and yelled out from her room. Jesse went to her room and read a book in bed with her before heading downstairs. I decided to linger in bed and happened to have my iPad in my room so I grab that and surf the web. I finally jump out of bed and the house is freezing. Time to go downstairs and turn up the heat.

I get downstairs and take a picture of Riley and Jesse playing cars. Riley comments on the orange light from the camera and Jesse makes some comment about "mommy's doing her day in the life, but he sounds like I am about to put him through a day of torture. I remind him that he thought it would be a great idea to put all these day in the life posts into a book. He clarifies that he meant all the 'completed days in the life' and that he wasn't encouraging me to do more. Yeah, ok - still going to do these.

I do my morning things: drink my Citrocel, clean up the kitchen and feed the cats. One of the cats also takes supplemental fiber. I mix it into his low protein modified food along with his arthritis medicine. I then feed the other cat her diet food and hope they don't eat the other's food.

Riley, Jesse and I play cars much of the morning. Riley loves her cars (some are from the movie and some are my brothers from when he was a kid). I just bought the car mat thinking that this would encourage her independent play, but it's had the reverse effect. "Why won't anyone play with me <insert whiny voice>." So we've been playing cars constantly. In fact, she wanted me to play and I told her I would after I went to the bathroom. She told me that she would bring the cars into the bathroom. She didn't like it when I said "no" (I deserve a little me time in the bathroom, don't I?). I heard her slump over to her dad and whine that I wouldn't let her play cars with me in the bathroom. Sheesh, kid. Luckily Jesse confirmed that I can be alone in the bathroom and stood in as one of the cars until I was done.

I also put some clothes in the wash, we all eat, get cleaned up and dressed.

8:45 -  We head out to the gym for our first activity of the day. Our gym recently built a parking ramp so Riley asks to park in the 'dark cave'. Our gym has also upgraded to Onyx level. Our membership is only at Platinum, but we are being grandfathered in... except they just raised our rates. Hmmm. They are remodeling the gym to reflect the Onyx level so things are torn up a bit inside. I do mostly cardio and my physical therapy stretches, but also work in a couple tricep exercises that my PT wanted me to do as I try to work back towards my regular strength training.

10:00 - Done with the workout and head out after Jesse gives Riley her post work out fruit strip snack. I never give her these so I am sure she's disappointed when she goes to the gym with just me. Once home I shower and we all get cleaned up for the rest of the day.

Excited that she gets to go to a corn maze.

11:00 -  All cleaned up we head out to Sever's Corn Maze. Riley was supposed to go here with her class so I thought she would just get to have fun here twice. The day after we went I realized that Riley won't be in school the day her class is going because we are going to Madeline Island. Glad she still got to experience it.

On the way to the maze.

I don't think we've gone here since Riley was born so I am excited to check out all the kid's things they have there. We start by eating - Riley and I each have a corn dog and split some fries. Just enough carbs and grease to get us through some of the kid's activities.

The corn pit was a HUGE hit. To tell the truth I've always wanted to jump in this thing, but never had the guts as an adult without a kid to do so. Riley wanted one of us to come in with her and I didn't even give Jesse a chance to volunteer. In fact, she loved this area so much we did it twice. (Update: days later and I am still finding corn in various places.)

Riley also had fun on this bubble jumping thing... until Jesse jumped on it (I let him do this one - I can't hog all the fun stuff). Riley came down pretty hard and lost it, but was able to pull it together for a bit before she was on to the trains.

Peaking out of a train car.

We did actually check out the maze. They have a treasure hunt of sorts where you have to find signs with certain things on them. This year the theme was Explore Minnesota so the signs related to Paul Bunyan and the Big Blue Ox. Riley quickly got bored and wanted to go back to the trains.

We made our way out, but headed over to the hay maze and then got some corn on the cob instead of checking out the train again.

Riley was still doing really well, but I could tell she was waning. We still hadn't checked out the animals so we decided we'd quickly do that and leave. Riley is a little skeptical when it comes to animals so I knew there would be a good level of interest with some whining mixed in, but we made it through without a freakout so in the end I count it as a positive experience.

After hearing three other kids get called 'Riley' (one boy and two girls) while we were here Jesse suggests we change Riley's name. I bet none of them are named after their great great grandfather.

2:15 - Time to go! We'd been at the maze for over 2 hours and it had gotten crowded. As expected, Riley falls asleep on the way home. I hate car naps because it either means she won't take a nap when we get home (which only happens about half the time now anyway), or she totally loses it when she gets woken up when we get home. It's very traumatic. This time it was the traumatic wake up. We soothed her with some cars and some food and then brought her upstairs for a nap. And then it resulted in no nap as well, but we made sure she had 'rest time' in her bedroom where I could hear her read to herself for about an hour.

I turn the volume down on the monitor and work on this post and my pictures and just enjoy my moment of sitting. I watch the last few minutes of the Vikings game and am glad that I didn't stay home to watch - not just because they lost (bad), but because it was a beautiful, sunny, crisp fall day. And then I have a snack.

4:00 - Riley yells out for 'daddy', but I am closer so I go upstairs. She tells me she's done with her rest, but when Jesse arrives upstairs she tells him that she actually napped. We explain to her that it's ok that she just rested, but that she can't say she took a nap when she didn't. I think it was an honest mistake in the words that she used, but decide it's a good time to slip in a lesson about telling the truth since Jesse called her out on it.

I'm still exhausted from running around at the corn maze so I agree to let Riley watch some TV while I chill out.

4:45 -  Jesse has been playing video games while Riley 'rests', but I find him downstairs cleaning the lint out of the dryer. I ask what he wants to do about dinner, but he says he isn't hungry yet. I head upstairs and think I should take Riley outside, but before I do anything about it Jesse comes up and suggests we return books to the library. We head out in the wagon, return books, and then stop at the park on the way home.

5:45 - Back at home Jesse starts Riley's dinner while I do dishes, then head upstairs and put all the clean laundry away. While I'm up there I clean up Riley's room and set out some clothes for her for the next day.

6:15 - Try and figure out what to eat for dinner since Jesse made food for Riley and himself. I grab a few random items and put together a garbanzo bean salad that's pretty good. I start a batch of rice. We all like rice, but it's one item Riley will never turn down so I like to make it at least once a week.

7:00 - I head upstairs with Riley where she picks out her robot jammies. After brushing teeth we get into bed and read books. Riley is really into reading to us now, but sometimes will let me read a book or let me read every other page. Tonight she wants to read on her own while snuggling with me.

7:40 - I head downstairs and since I am feeling good (no migraines, etc) I decide to have a glass of wine. Lately, I've been hanging out in the basement reading my new photography book or playing on the iPad while Jesse plays video games, but tonight I tackle this post while it is still fresh in my head. I turn on the TV and have crappy TV shows playing in the background.

I check my fitbit and see that I am close to 15,000 steps. Since working from home my steps have dropped dramatically. It's really, really hard to get the recommended 10,000 steps a day. Jesse and I have a little competition with our steps. I was winning until I started working from home.

9:45 - Tired. I head up to bed where Jesse has already checked in on Riley. She's been falling asleep with her light on so he turns that off. Unlike when I worked in the office, I didn't have to set out any clothes for the next day so I just hop into bed. I toss and turn for awhile, and finally fall asleep around 10:30.