A day in the life

I want to remember these days.  What life is REALLY like with these two little monkeys.  I tried to look back and see what it was like when Riley was 10 weeks old, and I only had vague notes that seemed a little sugar-coated.  So I wanted to record what life is like, in words and pictures, for one whole day.  24 hours.  Normally I find these kinds of posts painfully boring to read, but I'm hoping lots of pictures will help with that.  And it's more for my own record anyway!

The day: Thursday April 19, 2012.  Jackson: 10 weeks 2 days old, Riley: 21 months and 3 weeks old

This first part doesn't have any pictures because it was the middle of the night!!
2:30am Jackson wakes for a feed (his last feed was at 11pm)... he's finished in 10 minutes and back in his rock n play and fast asleep
5:00am Riley wakes up (so painfully early), and Mark goes into her room and lays with her until she's "allowed" to get out of her room (5:45).  She plays happily, while he sleeps on her bed... typical. :)
5:30am Jackson wakes to be fed- 10 minutes later he's done and back asleep
5:50am Mark gets up with Riley, makes her breakfast, comes and gets Jackson from me, and I get 40 minutes of uninterrupted sleep while he gets ready for work!

6:30am... my day starts!!!  I roll out of bed and come into the lounge to see THIS:

Ri jumping on the trampoline, watching "Choo Choo Mickey Mouse" while Mark gets ready for work.  Meanwhile, Jackson is getting tired and wants to be fed, so I feed him while Riley bounces away (at 6:45am.) Normally Jackson is still sleeping at this time, but today he was already awake.

7:00am... after some milk, some shushing and bouncing, the little one falls asleep in my arms.  I hold him for a few minutes then slip him into his bed so I can get some breakfast.  Such a lovely sight- precious little baby, sleeping in his bed, all by himself (well... he was out in the lounge with me and Riley).  Oh and side note- we JUST stopped swaddling him (as in, last night was his first night sans swaddle), and we put him in a sleep sack instead, and he seems to LOVE it.  Last night was his best night of sleep so far!

7:15am We have to take advantage of the time when Jack is asleep, so Riley and I have some uninterrupted reading time while the baby snoozes away...

Can you spot the sleeping baby...?

7:45am.  After a short nap, Jack Jack is awake and joins story time, until he gets fussy and we move on to singing songs.  Riley requests I sing "Wheels on the Bus", "ABCs", and a bunch of Wiggles songs... At around 8:10am Jackson wants to eat AGAIN (this child is constantly hungry!!), and Riley takes advantage of me being occupied and wanders the house until she finds a paci that she has stashed away.  She has a secret stash in her bedroom!

8:20am  Once Jackson is done eating, it's time to play!

8:45am Jack lets out his "I'm getting tired" squawk, so I work on getting him to sleep.  While I'm doing that, Riley is busy playing with her toys- namely, putting all her dolls to "bed" in their own green toy bins.   She later added blankets to each of their beds.

8:55am Jackson has fallen asleep, but is restless and fighting it, so I try putting him in his swing in his room, which calms him, but he doesn't fall asleep.  Then he does a massive poop, which explains why he wasn't sleeping.  Then he wants to eat, although it seems more of for comfort than out of hunger.  Once he's calm and happy, we give up on nap time for the moment and decide to go with some sibling tummy time instead.

Around 10am Riley starts to act crazy, which is a sure sign she's getting tired...

Jackson has to hang out by himself for a few minutes while I get Riley ready for bed, and he sure does look cute!

10:20 I read Riley a story and say goodnight, then come back and work on getting the littler one to sleep. He goes right to sleep snuggling with me, but is woken 20 minutes later with another massive poop.  I change him and he goes back to sleep while comfort nursing.  I get to watch TV and relax while both babies snooze away!!  For 2 hours!

12:40pm Riley wakes up!  She comes running down the hallway with her paci and blankies, and uses her negotiating skills to convince me to let her watch Mickey Mouse.  I wasn't going to let her watch any TV, but she was just too darn funny, I couldn't resist.  She goes, "Mama, watch choo choo Micky mouse TEN times, okay?"  When I laughed and said no, she came back with "watch it FIVE times, okay?"  I said no again, and she demanded SIX times!  Finally she said "watch it ONE time, okay?" and I gave in to her demands.  And it kept her happy (and away from her sleeping brother) for 15 minutes while I made her lunch. :)  And yes she is still in her PJs!

Meanwhile Jackson continues sleeping, although I didn't feel comfortable leaving him on the couch while I made lunch (hellooo high chance of baby rolling off the couch...), so he gets transferred back into his bed.  I don't like having him sleep in there for all his sleeps because I worry about him getting a flat head, but sometimes it's inevitable. Lucky for me, he stayed asleep!

1:15pm... Riley is eating lunch (she requested a peanut butter sandwich, a banana, AND a quesadilla), and Jackson is woken up by a massive poop blowout, requiring all new clothes!  Once she was done eating Riley was happy to entertain him while I got him something to wear.

1:30pm Feed the hungry baby, followed by some tummy time and Riley demanding to hold him!  Then we send Riley outside to play in the sandbox and burn off some energy.  It's too cold and windy for the little guy and he starts to get tired, so I work on getting him to sleep.  He goes to sleep without a fight (2:15pm), only to be woken about half an hour later by a loud toddler coming inside from some outside fun.  Bummer.  Once he's awake, I change yet another massive poop, and Riley uses this time while I'm occupied to search for an ipad and have some alone time in her room.

3:00pm Pictures and play time with my babies!!!  Jack is all smiles, Riley plays with my hair and we talk about the difference between long and short, and she asks for a ponytail.

3:30pm Feed Jackson... again.
4:00pm Pile the babies in the car to go pick up daddy from the train station.  We stopped for a treat before heading home, and Jackson slept the entire time. And I know, her seat belt clip needs to be higher, my husband is less than awesome at buckling her in (this was his handiwork), so you can go ahead and blame him.

4:45pm We get home, get the babies out, and I start making dinner.  Meanwhile, Mark catches up with his babies.

Riley the master tower builder built that tower all by herself!  Once she finishes building it, she likes to kick it over.  Also?  She has added "Go, Dog. Go!" to her list of books she has memorized, but she calls it "Hot Dog Go."  Makes me laugh every time.

5:30 pm We eat dinner, then I work on getting fussy Jack to sleep.  I let him sleep for 20 minutes, then wake him at 6:10pm for bath time with the babies.  We've been putting the babies to bed a bit earlier since Riley is waking up so. damn. early.  And in case you can't tell in the photo below, Riley is trying to "help" bathe Jackson by dumping a huge cup of water on his head.  This was followed by a big splashing tantrum on her part.  Jackson was unfazed...

Once clean, I get Jackson out, dressed, and into his room to be fed.  He's out by 6:45pm.  Meanwhile Mark gets Riley ready and in bed.  Usually she goes right to sleep, but on this night she decides to get out of bed! Mark goes back in to get her to sleep, and ends up falling asleep on her bed while she plays for an hour!  Finally I go in there and kick Mark out, read Riley one more story, and she goes to sleep around 8pm, over an hour later than normal.

Once both babies are in bed and ASLEEP, we watch some TV, do some computer stuff, I edit photos, and then I go to bed at 10:00pm since I know Jackson will be up a few times in the night.  Sure enough, he's up just after 11pm, eats for less than 10 minutes, and goes right back to sleep!  The end of our day!