Parenting Thursdsay: Morning Makeover

My goal for the month of September is to get my mornings organized, they are a complete disaster.  When I say disaster I mean disaster.  Children running wild, wrestling four year olds to get them dressed, negotiating deals to eat breakfast,  crying, whining babies hanging from your legs as you struggle to even get dressed.  

Yes for the most part that is my morning.  It is not uncommon for Sean to arrive home to pick us up and I am running around half dressed, scrambling to get bottles made, food for lunches and pleading with Cyrus to please for the last time to find his shoes.
Wow, does it really have to be this hard?

No, but in order to whip my mornings into shape I do have to give up a little of something that I hold dear; sleep.  In my world sleep is  hard to come by, and in the past year I have learned to adapt grabbing a few extra moments of rest whenever I can.  

Sage at one year old still does not sleep through the night. In return this means I have not slept for more than four hours straight in over a year.  Now I average around 5-7 hours of interrupted sleep every night. And although he still gets up 2-3 times a night he usually is pretty easy to get back down with a bottle.  A lot better than 6 months ago when I’d sleep for two hours, be up for two hours over and over again until about 6 a.m. when he’d finally crash and then it was too late for me to go back to bed. 

I haven’t set an alarm clock in over a year thanks to my little night owl/ morning rooster. But I’m to a point that I will give up an hour of my precious sleep to settle the tides of my hectic morning. Keeping myself on a schedule, getting up by 6 a.m. every morning, I can get myself together before I have to get Cyrus up and even some mornings before Sage wakes.  

And once I’m awake, with coffee in hand I actually love the quite and stillness of the morning. Stealing a few minutes for yourself at the start of the day can be a golden opportunity.

If I can get myself in order next in line is Cyrus.  We are really trying to keep him on a schedule and trying to use his bedtime and morning charts.  They are a great reminder and instant reward for him to complete his morning tasks, getting dressed, making his bed, breakfast, cleaning up, teeth and shoes. Once he’s completed a task listed he can draw a smiley face next to the picture/ word with a dry ease marker.

 

I made one more addition to his charts this week in hopes of helping him get in a better breakfast routine.  His morning menu lists different choices he has for breakfast, cereal, waffles, eggs ect. and a beverage.  

Cy got a real kick out of this. A couple weeks ago playing with his cousins they all were making and handing out menus to all the adults, which gave me the idea for Cy’s morning menu.  We play or joke around about being a restaurant quite often if we’re at the bakery or even home so this gives Cy a chance to play it up even more. 

So Hello September, Hello a little organization and sanity.... goodbye carefree summer and disaster mornings.  We'll see how this goes.

Parenting Thursday: Routine Charts

We are transitioning into Autumn and falling into order.  Poor Cyrus is so excited for school to start, but a little confused of the where and when.  The boys' summer schedule has been a little here and there.  They are at their Aunt Robins most of the time, Nana took Cy a day a week for a while, my mom had Cy for Tuesday story time and a half a week the end of July add that into a few days I took off.  We have also started to talk to Cy about his new schedule that will start when he goes to school. 

No wonder every morning for the past week he has gotten up and ask “Mommy where am I going today?”.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he started asking “Mommy who am I, where am I going and what is going on?!”.

  First, to start understanding how many days are left before school starts I made Cy’s School Countdown Calendar.  I cut out and added a few weeks that are left in August once the calendar was printed.  
There’s a star on  September 7th, the first day of school, and we’ve started to check off the days leading up to it.  Now he can’t keep telling me he’s going to school tomorrow, he can look at his calendar and know how many days are left.

  Next we are working on the routine of bedtime, which Cy likes to stretch into one more show, one more book and a fight with pajamas.  

Bed time chart shows him at 8:00 (still working on telling time, so I went with a visual he can compare to our clock) he gets a TV show, this is also his last chance for a cup of juice and a light snack.  Then TV is OFF and we read a couple books, get pajamas on and brush our teeth.  Then it’s lights out.

      We are going to try a similar chart for his wake up routine.  Morning chart starts with waking up, getting dressed and making up the bed.  I’ve found this is better to do once he is first up otherwise he gets into too many other things to focus on his morning responsibilities.  

Next is breakfast, this is a big one because I’ve been so lax with this for so long.  I never worried if he didn’t eat he could always eat at the babysitters, even his short stay at daycare they ate breakfast in the morning there.  If breakfast is accomplished he usually gets a bit of play time before we need to get out the door.  That’s followed by clean up, brushing his teeth and getting on a pair of shoes (well till it gets cold enough to include putting on a coat too).

Visual charts that Cy can keep record on seem to work good with him.  Be Good Chart worked wonders a few months ago.  He definitely is my child and needs visual reminders and something to keep him on track so he doesn’t wander into starting too many things when he’s suppose to be doing something else!  

We are all looking forward to autumn and a little bit more structure in our daily routine.  I’d like to say things will slow down a bit but I just started filling in a blank calendar with all the odds n’ ends and things we already have to do for the month.  I guess I can say that’s not happening, but hopefully being organized will help us save on time. 

A little adds up here and there. I'll take what I can get.  Besides I think the universe and I are getting back on track, things will be okay.