I thought that I would share what a day in our life looks like.  Please join me for a photo tour!

1:50am – Bad start to morning – woke up with a terrible headache, ended up getting out of bed, being sick, taking Panadol (Tylenol) and drinking some water

2:30am – Back to sleep

6:30am – Awake with Joe. Decide to nurse him in bed because of being so tired.  Chris has already left for work, so it’s just him and me.

6:50am – Get dressed, make bed, and check email

7am – Start laundry, fold cloth nappies, drink a big glass of water

7:30am – Empty dishwasher, re-load dishwasher, and clean up the kitchen

In case you were wondering what was going on with Joe all this time, he was playing in the lounge, “reading” books, and listening to his records 🙂

7:40am – Start the kettle, pump a bottle for Joe, read to Joe, and pour myself a cup of tea

8am – Joe starts to have a meltdown – time for his “second breakfast”!

I was watching a documentary on NASA while nursing him.  The photo below makes it look like it was some cheesy B-movie about space invaders, but I promise it was scientific!

8:15am – Hang some of the laundry, play & sing with Joe, change him, and dance around to “Hokey Pokey.  What?  Don’t you dance to the “Hokey Pokey” in the morning?  You should.

Put Joe in his Jolly Jumper for a few minutes while finishing the laundry…

9am – Read “Where is the Green Sheep?” to Joe, nurse him one more time, and put him down for his morning nap

9:10am – Run on treadmill

9:55am – Shower, start 2nd load of laundry, called and texted with friend who was in labor, put together a quick grocery list, checked email, collected library books/CDs to return, and took out a chicken to thaw.

10:30am – Joe is awake!

Take him into the lounge and quickly finish hanging the laundry and put away any dry items while he’s still smiling and happy 🙂  Play with him once everything is up on the rack.

10:50am – Sunblock application in preparation for our walk outside later.  Got to put it on at least 15 minutes before going into the sun.

11am – Nurse Joe.

11:15am – Head out on errands to library, cleaners, and grocery.  First, have to get all of this…

Down these…

Just imagine what it’s like on the way back up, when I’m bearing groceries and a shirt from the cleaners!  Thankfully, it’s only this 1 flight of stairs before reaching the lift, and then down to ground level.

Ready to go!

Joe had fun at the library, though you wouldn’t know it from this photo:

12:30pm – Get home; burning up from carrying Joe + pram + nappy bag + groceries + library books + everything else but the kitchen sink up those stairs.  Rue decision to wear jeans in summer.

12:40pm – Nurse Joe, then feed him some solid foods.

This is what he was eating.  Looks gross, but it tasted so good that I wanted to eat a bowl of it myself!

Joe’s food was a meal that we’d had for dinner last night.  I just pulsed it once or twice with the hand blender so that it was a thick, lumpy mash, added some cottage cheese, and about 1/8 – 1/4 of a tsp of spirulina powder.

This is what Joe looked like when he realized that he had eaten all of his food and none was left in the bowl:

What a face!

1:00pm – Joe has some play-time while I try to eat lunch.  I get about 2 bites in before Joe sees what I’m doing, lunges for my fork, then bursts into tears because he can’t have any of my spicy homemade chicken.  Sorry, Joe.  I end up putting away the food and playing with Joe on the nursery floor.  Let’s just say that I’m glad that I have a cheap cell phone, because Joe loves to bang it on the floor!

Working on crawling…

1:50pm – Put Joe down for nap and work on Bible study

2:30 – 2:45pm – Eat a not-so-healthy lunch of corn tortilla chips; have a spoonful of Nutella for dessert

Side Note: In the 8+ years that I’ve known Chris, he’s been telling me about how great Nutella is and that I should try some.  I finally tried some this week after being given homemade chocolate hazelnut spread.  Wow – so good!  And so bad!

2:45pm – Napped {normally don’t do this, but pretty tired from waking up in the wee hours of the morning and being sick}

4pm – Joe is awake, and so am I!  I change him, nurse him, put away the remainder of the laundry, put a chicken in a pot of water to boil, and play with Joe.

4:30pm – Chris home – we chat about our days while he plays with Joe as a I check on the chicken.

5pm – Fed Joe more solid foods; ended up rearranging freezer while pulling out some things for him so that I could fit my 16 C of homemade chicken broth in there.  We don’t have a big freezer, so I’m constantly rearranging things:

Bottom drawer w/ homemade chicken broth and applesauce, fruits + veggies, and bottles

This is the top drawer, pre-organization…

And here it is after…

Chris ate his dinner during this time, too.

6:00pm – Bath time for Joe!

This was also when I ate my dinner.  Chris finished Joe’s bath time responsibilities by drying him off and changing him.  I scurried into the kitchen to try out a new recipe – hummus melts.  Unfortunately, I was in such a hurry that I made two mistakes.  Can you guess what they are?

Mistake #1 – this was supposed to have hummus, then spinach, and then cheese.  Mistake #2 – was supposed to use mozzarella cheese, not cheddar/tasty cheese.  Whoops.  It was good, but too cheesy and not quite as healthy as it should have been.

6:30pm – Story time and nursing Joe once more before he goes to bed.

7pm – Joe is asleep!  Hurriedly pick up the lounge, then finish the chicken, de-bone it, chop it, and measure it into 2 C servings in Ziploc baggies for the freezer.  Decide that I want something sweet, so I make no-bake chocolate peanut butter cookies.

Throughout the chicken de-boning/chopping process, Chris was like this:

However, within a few minutes of starting to mix up the peanut butter and chocolate, he says, “Whatcha doin’?” and ambled on over.  Hmm.

About the cookies – these are always hit-or-miss for me.  Last time I made them, they were great.  The time before, they were soupy.  This time, I got to the last cup of oatmeal and thought, “Wait… did I already add all of the oatmeal?”  Decided that I did, then second-guessed myself and added a 1/2 C just to be safe.  Turns out that I hadn’t added all of the oatmeal, so they were a bit runny, hence storing them in the fridge!

8:15pm – Write a post, play around with HTML on blog, upload pictures and videos while watching “NCIS” on DVD with Chris

10:00pm – Start dishwasher, head to bed!

Thanks for joining us!  I’d love to see what a day in your life looks like, too 🙂