Daily Routine

I love my new routine! : )

Jiale usually wakes up at 6am+. But I still wanna sleep, so I let him play with my iPhone till 7am before I drag myself out of bed. (I know it's not good for young kids to play with phone.. but there are some really good apps ya? At least it's 'controlled' cos I definitely want my phone back when I wake up :P And surprisingly, heusually returns the phone willingly and doesn't ask for the phone for the rest of the day. The only thing I am worried about is his eyes : /) Then I will do some bits & pieces around the house and give Jiale some breakfast if he wants to eat (usually not, cos he drinks milk when he wakes up), and I eat my breakfast. Didi usually wakes up a bit past 7am nowadays, he used to be able to sleep till 8.30am while I was still breastfeeding him, cos when he woke up at 5am+, I just breastfed him and he continued to sleep. Now that he's sleeping through the night, I also can't expect/hope that he will sleep till 8.30am la!

After Didi drinks (or more likely, refuses to drink) his morning milk, it will be free play or homelearning activities, OR messy/art/paint (often 3-in-1) play, depending on whether Didi can join in. Like this morning, Didi could join in to play with watercolors, so we started at 8am. Didi has to be down for his morning nap around 10am, so we have to stop by 9.15am latest for the boys' bath and breakfast. But Jiale finished up the watercolors around 9am, so we came in for bathtime. Since we were early, the boys were able to play for a longer time. Water play is definitely Didi's current favorite! 9.30am, I dragged Didi out, dressed him, gave him a drink of water, and put him down in his cot.

Having achieved so much in the morning, and since Jiale had started happily playing with his Playdoh, I gave myself a 30-min break - checked fb, drank some milo, took my morning shower, washed up the breakfast dishes, simple lunch prep.

10am, joined Jiale in his room, all ready to engage him in learning activities! But I don't have lesson plans or such things for him.. me lazy and I know he isn't likely to cooperate.. So my goal was just to play with the educational stuff (a lot!) in his room, depending on which ones he preferred. We played with Playdoh for a while more, then moved on to Mazes activity book, Go Einstein Go (a logic game), Chinese dominos, a fishing game, a board game (to learn turns-taking & moving by throwing dice, and counting the dots on the dice), a spatial learning game (the free gift that comes with Enfagrow, dunno how to describe it), a sticker game book, a buttoning activity.. I think that's about it.. before Didi woke up.

If Didi can't join in the activitiy (no shaving foam for Didi yet!!), we will do the activity during Didi's morning nap. This pretty much means not much learning stuff in the morning, cos the only alone time I have with Jiale is spent creating & undoing a mess :P

Time for Didi's milk feed again. If Jiale is not doing anything much or in his room, I will go to his room with Didi and try to do more learning stuff with Jiale while Didi plays on his own. But for today, Jiale was already engrossed with his trains at the balcony (trains area) when Didi was done with his milk. So we joined him there. The brothers promptly proceeded to forget about mummy and just played with each other and the trains : ) So I just hung around and sang along with the CD and watched them play.
(Oh ya, for the morning learning time, if Jiale is engaged in something else, eg trains, I won't disrupt him. Will let him continue doing whatever he is doing.)

1pm, time for Brillkids. I let them watch one lesson each of Chinese, English & Math a day, total less than 20 minutes. By 1.30pm, they eat lunch. After that, Jiale goes for nap. Didi might nap at the same time as Jiale or slightly later, depending on how long he naps in the morning. He had a 2.5 hour nap this morning, so I let him stay up till 2.30pm.

Once Jiale goes in for his nap, it's FREE time for me! Even if Didi is awake, he is perfectly happy playing on his own.. probably because Jiale isn't around to snatch toys, haha! So while Didi explores around the house, I eat my lunch. I have at least one hour to myself while both the boys are napping. During my break, I either read parenting books or read blogs, and of course, fb! It's also because I have this free time that I am able to blog. (Only one computer at home and hubby uses it when he comes back from work.) Used to prepare the afternoon play activity during this time too, but nowadays I bring the boys out to playground around 4pm, no time for anything else, so it also saves me some prep time.

Home around 6.30pm, bathe the boys, prepare a quick dinner for them, they eat, then drink milk. After milk, Didi goes to bed, around 7.30pm. Then it's bedtime stories for Jiale, and he's off to bed at 8pm. End of the workday for me!

Hubby comes back from work with takeaway dinner, we eat together, watch TV. I read parenting books and prepare for the next morning's play activity. Still fb-ing, on my phone, lol.

I'm so much happier now that I have a routine that works. For quite time, I have been coping quite well with the mundane stuff like getting the boys fed and bathed etc. But I felt something was lacking.. sometimes whole days went by without having really 'done' anything.. Did they learn anything? What did I achieve? What did I do with them having spent the whole day together? So I thought about it and set out priorities - messy play? homelearning? dvds? computer? outdoor play? I realised that if I did not plan, and just 'see how', usually nothing got done. It would of course be perfect if I could incorporate everything everyday.. But it's just not possible.. If I wanna spend more time at home doing learning stuff, I would not be able to let them go outdoors for two hours.. If I give up the messy play in favor of learning stuff... I don't want. So I accept that I CANNOT do everything. Umm, so learning stuff has been kicked to the lowest priority - small pockets of time in the day, as and when I'm free and he's interested, or when it rains in the afternoon and we can't go to the playground.. provided he doesn't get caught up with his trains again!