Week 1 Schedule Thoughts

How did the first week of the schedule go?

What Worked

• Mommy's exercise time - I got on the treadmill for about 20-25 minutes on M, W, & F, as scheduled, even when Lance took the train and wasn't around on Friday. This is a bit precarious because it depends on Logan staying asleep and RJ behaving and neither one getting up in the middle of my workout.  It did work this week though, and at least on Mondays, I will have Lance to help because he drives in to work rather than taking the train.
• Getting ready for the day - I left enough time to get everyone dressed, sun screened, and fed.
• Calendar time - RJ really seems to enjoy knowing what day it is and what we'll be doing. We also started creating a picture daily schedule so that he will have a pictorial as well as mental representation of what happens when. Hopefully, we'll finish it up this week so we can start using it.
• Feeding cats and watering plants - the only thing I might change is we should water the outside potted plants in the afternoon after nap when we can stay outside for a while. RJ doesn't like going out for 2 minutes and having to come back in.
• Mommy-RJ time (which will be mommy-directed curriculum time) - Logan has cooperated and either slept or played on his own in the bouncer during this time, so I can focus on RJ. On Friday we even got Logan in on the action by having him put his hand print on some artwork (which involved a bath for Logan directly following).
• Lunch time - good time, left enough time to make and eat
• Dinner time - generally works, although Logan sometimes gets fussy. I don't think there's a way to predict that or to change it - we need to cook and eat dinner and I don't want to spend the kids' nap time cooking EVERY day (although for more involved meals I do have that planned).

What to Improve

• Logan's afternoon nap - we need to have some consistency. He refused to sleep on Wed, Thurs, and Friday. It could be a fluke, but I need to work on establishing a more regular schedule for him, so that I can have some time each day completely kid free.
• RJ's afternoon nap - he tends to go to sleep a good hour after I put him down and I don't want to wake him up at his scheduled time because he gets cranky. This delays EVERYTHING in the late afternoon/evening. I think that if we can get him to bed earlier, he'll wake earlier and thus take an earlier nap. So we need to get out of the rut.
• Clean Up Time - I need to get RJ doing this earlier so that it doesn't run into bath time. I think once we don't have as much free play, and as much clutter from our general house mess (that I need to get cleaned up and organized), this will fall into place.
• Bath Time - I think I'm about as efficient as I can be here, with both kiddos in the bath at the same time, but it always seems to take longer than I'd like and I really want RJ in bed earlier than 8:30/9. Perhaps with Lance taking the train more often, this will change because I will have help. Or maybe it will make it worse because RJ gets really excited to see daddy and starts to act up. We'll see.

What Interfered

• This week, I had to go into work (one last time) on Tuesday for a Thesis Defense and we spent the rest of the day at Krishawn's house hanging out with Krishawn and Erika and Ethan. So we couldn't follow the schedule on Tuesday
• On Wednesday, Logan and Lance woke up with Pink Eye, and so we lost our normal morning playground time and Mommy-RJ time to Doctor and Pharmacy visits. This is par for the course with children.

The next step: Try another couple of weeks.

Also, from this, I made the decision that I will plan 4 days of curriculum, so that if we have a messed up day, we can easily adjust. If we have two messed up days, we can have some of our curriculum on a weekend day instead. If we have more than three messed up days,  I think skipping a week of curriculum would do us good!