What I Did Yesterday

One of the bloggers I read has a daughter a few months older than the Doodle (aka G - the Doodle takes too long to type), and has written annual “A Day in the Life” posts about motherhood. Since it’s been ages since I’ve blogged, I thought I might try it myself. Yesterday was a good day:
7:15 a.m. – get out of bed and shower before G gets up.
7:30 a.m. – G gets up. We discover that Papa ate the last of the oatmeal, so I start some steelcut oats on the stove and we say goodbye when he heads off for work. General picking-up and morning chores commence. I start a load of laundry (towels – we do the other stuff all in one fell swoop on the weekends).
7:55 a.m. – Oats with honey is served. And also milk.
8:15 a.m. – Breakfast is done. Change out of oaty pajamas and wet diaper into dayclothes. Caillou is usually reserved for afternoon hissy fits, but I have stuff I need to get done, so G gets to watch some on Netflix.
8:30 a.m. – I’m making bread – honey whole-wheat. God bless Kitchen-Aid.
8:50 a.m. – Caillou is over and the bread is rising; we head to the grocery store. G campaigns for a balloon, but manages to avoid pulling off the impulse-buy products at the checkout counter.
9:45 a.m. – Home to punch down the bread dough (me) and play with the balloon (her). By the time I clean up the kitchen, it’s time to bake the pizza crust, and when that’s done, the bread loaf is ready to go in.
10:30 a.m. – Rescue the laundry. I transfer all my knitting books from the loft to the basement where my yarn is, then we play in G’s room. She reads books on the rocking chair and I sit on the floor and knit on a sock until the timer goes off for the bread.
11:15 a.m. – The bread is lovely! Too hot to eat right now, though. We have farmer’s market bread with a yummy lentil spread, and strawberries for lunch.
12:00 p.m. – Playtime. I wash some dishes that had been soaking.
12:30 p.m. – Reading books and checking email.
1:15 p.m. – Naps.
2:30 p.m. – G is awake already – she’s been sleeping for over two hours all week, and this messes me up, since I’ve become accustomed to a couple hours of rest (or Arrested Development) in the afternoon. Apparently it messes her up too – she’s whiny and cranky now. We have a snack (puffy rice crackers and milk) and read a few books to make the transition.
3:30 p.m. – I need to work on dinner. I fill the sink with water and bring the bath toys to the kitchen so G can play while I cook. This is effective for about 45 minutes, until she starts submerging all the towels I put around her, then pulling out the drain stopper.
4:15 p.m. – Caillou, anyone? I never let G watch TV twice in one day, but she’s so clingy and whiny, if I don’t I can’t finish dinner. And I’m not really in the mood for that. I’ve been too busy today, and it’s beginning to show.
4:50 p.m. – Dinner is in the oven with a blueberry cobbler to go in when it’s done. Caillou is pretty good.
5:10 p.m. – Papa comes home! Hooray! We’re both happy to see someone else. Dinner is ready, a little rough-housing takes place, and we eat. I get stressed out when he reminds me that we have to take his parents’ van back to their house after supper.
5:45 p.m. – N’s brother calls from PA – they (four of the five) have birthdays in the summer, so we are regaled with descriptions of parties and presents from the 5 and 3 year old niece and nephew. N arranges to call his brother back after we get back from taking the van back – which means I have to put G to bed, something I’d been looking forward to getting out of. Now I’m getting cranky.
6:15 p.m. – We borrowed the van because N picked up a couple of free four-drawer file cabinets at work. We schlep them into the house and head over to his folks’ house with our blueberry cobbler – they always have something that goes well on top of fruit desserts, and they do not disappoint. Mmm, frozen Cool Whip (“Sauce?” G asks. “Sauce?” She doesn’t want the cobbler, just the white sauce on top.)
7:00 p.m. – Drive home, stopping for gas. Ugh, $50 for 13 gallons. On the upside, our mileage was an attractive 32 mpg this week, thanks to highway driving and hypermiling.
7:30 p.m. – N calls his brother to say he’ll call him back another day, and puts G to bed when it’s clear that I’m not in the mood. I clean up the kitchen and try to troubleshoot our internet connection.
8:00 p.m. – It’s a good bedtime – she only screams for a couple minutes and then goes to sleep. N and I move one of the file cabinets up to the loft where it will replace our old, crappy broken-down one.
8:30 p.m. – The computer fixes itself and we settle in for a few episodes of The Office. We’re in the midst of Season 3, and had to endure the torture of Phyllis’s wedding (oh, the cringing!), but the rest of it was great. We’re watching instantly on Netflix – the best $8.99/month we’ve ever spent. They send us DVDs, but now that we’re through with Battlestar Galactica for a while (sob), we’re just watching The Office online and Caillou.
10:00 p.m. – Head to bed. We’ve taken to reading in bed; he’s reading The Gunslinger by Stephen King, and I’m working my way through Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset – I’m almost done with the second book! Only 300 pages to go! Book club is August 9!
10:30 p.m. – Lights out. Except I can’t sleep, partly because the kitchen is still a disaster – we didn’t finish washing up after dinner. I contemplate getting up at 11:15 to do dishes, but decide against it. I fall asleep around midnight.

Re-reading this, I feel more confident about my parenting, in spite of the double-dose of small animated Canadians. I'm a fan of idle parenting and have been told by numerous sources that G is coming along quite nicely. I think if I'd spent all day knitting and didn't do anything more immediately productive I might feel differently about it, but G and I tend to have a pretty good time together, when we've both had enough sleep. I've also noticed that it seems that we do watch a lot of TV - I don't think we do (I know we're below the national average), but when we get addicted to a show, we have to watch all of it at once. I think once we've caught up on The Office, we'll be done. I've been reading a ton lately, and just ran out of books (except for the Norwegian masterwork), which may be why I've been watching more TV.