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Sunday, May 21, 2006 - (see all news for this day)

a typical day - 01:45 PM
(filed under 'smiley')

i wrote about what smiley gets up to during a typical week, but even with all that written down, it doesn't look to be anywhere near as busy as i actually am, so i thought i'd write down what consists a typical day for smiley & i. i'll choose a day where we do something in the morning, let's say tuesday, when tots & toddlers is on.

this might be quite long, so click to read more, if it's of interest to you.

5am to 7am
smiley wakes up about every twenty minutes to have some boobie & then falls back to sleep. i manage to doze while he does this, but i rarely get much good sleep during this time.

7am to 7:30am
surprisingly, after cluster-feeding like that, he often tends to then stay asleep for another half an hour to an hour. i, however, am wide awake by that stage & waiting for the alarm to go off to wake shroom at 7:30, so i if i can't keep dozing then i might get up to check my email or maybe lie in bed reading or something.

7:30am to 8am
if smiley doesn't get his 'wake up boobie', it seems to start the day off badly for him, so, unless we rush straight out to do something, he'll lay all over me for half an hour or so playing, waking, having boobie. if i have a book, i might try to read while he does this.

8am to 8:30am
we play for a bit. he might climb on the kitchen benches, roll or jump around the couch or the bed. generally just waking up & thinking about the day. i might get dressed for the day now.

8:30am to 9:30am
breakfast for both of us. i might put on one of smiley's dvds for him to watch while he has brekky, but he often just pays it a bit of attention while he eats. occasionally he'll actually sit down & eat his breakfast in one sitting, but most times it takes a while for him to eat while he wanders around playing with various toys. i keep reminding him to eat over the bowl & then clean up the milk that spills when he doesn't. he also holds his willy for most of this time & tells me "no" every time i ask him if he needs to go to the toilet. eventually he agrees to go & we discuss if he wants to wee over the edge of the bowl like daddy does or to sit. if he decides to sit & needs to do a poo, then i wander back & forth from my breakfast for about ten minutes, checking on his progress. he's not a fast pooer. mind you, at least he doesn't need as much emotional support as he used to when he first started pooing on the toilet. it used to take twice that long & i'd have to cuddle him for most of the time while he did it.

9:30am to 9:45am
we'll brush our teeth & i may or may not have to sit on him to have a go at it myself to make sure all of his teeth have been brushed. if he has a good go at it himself & also lets me brush his teeth without kicking up a fuss, then he gets to choose two stickers to put on his special tooth brushing sticker page.

9:45am to 9:50am
i try to get smiley dressed. some days he'll get into his clothes with no troubles, but about half the time we argue about him not wearing his pajamas outside. i usually convince him by telling him that we're not going anywhere if he's still wearing his pajamas. the fun of the planned activity wins out after about five or so minutes of reasoning with him & he finally stands still so i can dress him.

9:50am to 10am
after smiley tries to tell me which door he wants to leave from, the back or front door, when i'm insisting we use the back door, we walk to the british club for tots & toddlers. it's only about a five minute walk on my own, but with smiley, it takes longer since he only has little legs & since we have to step on all the hole coverings in the road, the 'squares' & 'circles'. if we dare to miss one, we have to go back & step on it.

10am to 11:45am
i watch him play with the various toys at tots & toddlers. i get to chat with some other mums, but it's usually interrupted every three to five minutes by having to run over to smiley to tell him to stop hitting another child, or to stop stealing another child's toy, or to stop him pushing another child. he used to be such a pleasant little boy, but in the last three weeks or so he's turned into a bit of a monster. we've just started using 'time out' for him & it seems to be making a difference.

11:45am to 12pm
the adults pack the toys over at the side of the room & we sit down to sing some songs with the kids. smiley does enjoy this if i can get him to sit down. he's one of the older kids there & it seems that the ones who are his age or older prefer to keep playing with the toys. usually, all but one or two kids will sit & sing. if i convince him to stay on my lap, he does enjoy the songs & doing some of the actions, especially the last song we sing at the end about zooming to the moon where we throw them into the air after a countdown.

12pm to 12:10pm
we walk home from the british club. he's usually pretty ready for a nap at this stage & sometimes is having a melt down (wants everything & nothing) by the time we get home & i have to carry or drag him inside.

12:10pm to 12:30pm
probably about half the time, though, he's happy enough to come home & we play inside for a few minutes before i take him for boobie in bed & he falls asleep within ten minutes to half an hour.

12:30pm to 1pm
if i'm not dead on my feet, which is most often the case, i might wind down by reading for half an hour or so, or maybe check my email or do some jewellery. many times i have calls to make or things to organise so i might only get to have some time of my own a few times a week. kalyani arrives between 12:30 & 1pm so i might say hello or have a quick word to her about whatever's going on lately. truth be known, if i could chose the time to have a sleep, it'd be later in the afternoon, around 2pm or so. sometimes when i lay down to sleep in the day with smiley, i'm just not tired enough to sleep & i lay there for about an hour, wide awake & knowing that i'm going to have to get up soon & not have any sleep.

1pm to 2:30pm
if i don't get some sleep while smiley sleeps, then i end up getting really tired, impatient & cranky with him by around 8pm, so i try to be in bed with him by 1pm or no later than 1:30, so that i can have at least an hour sleep. kalyani is here cleaning during that time though, & it's often quite a broken sleep with her coming in & out & making noise. she tries to be quiet, but even relatively quiet noises are loud when you're trying to get to sleep.

2:30pm to 2:40pm
i set my alarm to wake at 2:30 so i can get dressed & pack my bag for the gym. if smiley hasn't already woken up, then i wake him & get him ready to go with kalyani for the afternoon. i might pack a small bag with whichever of his toys are popular at the moment, if he insists on taking them.

2:40pm to 2:45pm
i get my gear together, put on smiley's shoes & give him a kiss goodbye at the front door. kalyani walks off with him to her house, or to a friend's house where there are kids to play with, & i run across the road quickly to buy a couple of bananas to eat before going to the gym.

2:45pm to 3pm
i eat my bananas while i walk to the gym. i get changed out of my street clothes, put on my gym shoes & weight lifting gloves etc & go upstairs to start my work out.

3pm to 4:45pm
i do my work out. depending on what day of my work out i'm on (the current program has four days of various exercises concentrating on different areas of the body), it can take from one to two hours.

4:45pm to 5pm
i shower & change back into my street clothes.

5pm to 6pm
since i often have only the two bananas for lunch before my work out, i'll order some early dinner from the british club. while i wait for it to arrive (which usually takes around twenty minutes), i'll sometimes sit in the sun near the pool to try to get a little bit of colour into my legs as part of my general body improvement efforts. i might read a book or do some of my jewellery. (i'm currently working on a chain maille bracelet which i plan to wear to mum's wedding, so i'm working hard on it to make sure it's ready in time.) once my meal arrives, i might order something for shroom to eat so that it's ready for me to take away by the time i've finished my meal.

6pm to 6:15pm
when i arrive home from the british club, i pack unpack my sweaty gym gear so that it doesn't get all grungy & hang the bag up ready for the next day. shroom is usually home by the time i get back, so we have a bit of a chat & a "how was your day?" while he plays his computer game & eats his dinner.

6:15pm to 6:45pm
i might get the chance to check my email, upload some pictures, do some more jewellery, read, or tidy up a bit. i've usually got something i'm trying to finish, so most often i don't get a chance to just relax & do 'nothing'.

6:45pm to 7pm
i leave the house to walk to kalyani's place to pick up smiley. sometimes we buy a fresh juice on the way home, but if he's in a bit of a mood (which he often is, these days) then we'll come straight home rather than end up with him throwing a tantrum on the floor of the juice shop.

7pm to 7:30pm
smiley usually wants boobie on the couch after being away from me for so many hours, so if i have a book to read i'll read that while he watches a dvd from behind the boobie. around this time he starts to jump on me & i tell him that i won't sit with him if he keeps doing it. he insists he still wants boobie, but then he continues to throw himself at me.

7:30pm to 8pm
i'll get smiley to eat something. kalyani often gives him some dinner to eat at her place, but he often likes a bowl of cornflakes anyway. if he's up for something else then i might make him some cheese on toast or he might snack on some tuna or have a banana.

8pm to 8:30pm
a dvd might be playing in the background, but smiley mostly ignores it & wants to hang out with me. shroom's usually playing his game so smiley can't often join in on that, so i might do some painting or drawing with him, or maybe read him a book or two if he can sit still for long enough. we might play with his cars or if he's getting really bored i might make some sort of easy to cook thing which he can help with, such as a banana milk shake or some anzac biscuit type things.

8:30pm to 9pm
he often starts to get really rough with me around this time of night, or he begins throwing things to the ground or at me, so we'll end up having a time out or two. he settles down for about ten minutes, but he almost always ends up starting to be rough again, so around now i might put him into the bath. he likes to play with the detatchable shower head in the bath, or even just sit under the running water from the tap or switch it from the tap to the shower (back in it's place) so that the shower water runs over his head. he has an empty shampoo bottle which he likes to fill with water & squirt out, or he might grab the body cloth & wash himself or the bath with it. while he's in the bath, i can sometimes check email or read, but it's never anything that i can do for more than two minutes at a time since he often calls out to me or wants me to sit in the bathroom with him while he plays. obviously, i can't leave him unattended for more than a minute or so at a time.

9pm to 9:15pm
after his bath we do a 'riley bug' which is where i wrap him up in a towel with his arms wrapped up tight to his sides & i throw him (gently) on the bed. sometimes he likes to have boobie on the bed all wrapped up like that, but lately he wants to get unwrapped straight away & jump around for a bit. these days i have to chase him around for about ten minutes before he'll let me get him into his pajamas. running away through the house, totally naked, is a great game for him & he giggles his little head off as he dashes around.

9:15pm to 9:30pm
if i'm lucky, shroom might be off his game for a few minutes or be at a stage where smiley can sit on his lap & watch. it usually ends up with smiley trying to press buttons that shroom doesn't want him to press, so i might take him downstairs to do something else for a while. for some strange reason, he always wants a cup of tea at this time of night, so we make one together with him doing the stirring of the sugar & the jiggling of the tea bag & helping mummy to pour the milk. i never worry about the caffeine in it, because he's always more interested in the making of it than the drinking of it. he might take one tiny sip & then he loses interest & doesn't want any more.

9:30pm to 10pm
i try to get smiley to do something nice & calm at around this time of night since i prefer him to be in bed by 10pm. you might think it seems late for a toddler to go to bed, but no matter how hard i try, he simply won't go to sleep any earlier. rest assured that after two & half years of trying, i've simply resigned myself to the fact that he's a night owl & there's nothing i can do to change that. as i was saying, i try to get him to do something nice & calm, but it doesn't usually work. as is usual these days, a dvd might be playing in the background, but he often only gives it a cursory glance, even though he won't let me turn it off. he might play on shroom's electric piano & ask mummy to sing along, or he might want to dance to the ring tones on 'mummy's toy' (my mobile phone). if he starts to get rough with me we have more time out & if he's getting really silly then i take him upstairs for boobie in bed.

10pm to 10:30pm
i hop into bed with him with the lights off & we lie down for boobie. if the planets are aligned right </sarcasm> then he'll drop off to sleep on the boob within fifteen minutes or so. if not, he'll jump around on the bed, hop on & off the boob, hide under the sheets, lie on daddy's pillow, ask for a drink of water, bounce his legs around, etc, etc, until about 11:30. let's assume that on this night he's asleep by 10:30, which is about the average.

10:30pm to 10:45pm
if i'm not already dressed for bed, then i'll do so now, quietly & in the dark. even though i've mentioned checking email during this hypothetical day, i may not actually have had a chance to get online at all since the morning. the connection is sometimes really dodgy, in which case i can barely check email or surf, so i might have done other things if i've had any time. if the connection isn't bad, then i'll see if there's any email for me & if there is, if it's the type i can answer quickly.

10:45pm to 11pm
i'll say goodnight to shroom (who's most often still playing his game) & then head to bed. i'll rearrange smiley's sleeping little body so that there's room for me to lie down, or if he's sprawled across shroom's side of the bed, i'll shift him further into the middle. i'll set the alarm on my mobile phone for 7:30am to wake up shroom in the morning & then lie down to sleep. it might take me about fifteen to twenty minutes to finally wind down & fall asleep. smiley might wake once at around 3am or so for a feed & then go straight back to sleep, but about 75% of the time these days he won't wake until around 5am.

- - - - - - - - -

as you can see, if everything goes really well, i might have about two hours of free time over the space of twenty-four hours, split up into a few minutes here & there. i do enjoy relaxing at the british club for a little while after my work out, but it's rare that i can sit there & do just nothing, since i'm most often working on some jewellery. yes, the jewellery is for me, but it's not the same as just sitting doing nothing at all. i don't count eating as 'me time' either, since although i do enjoy eating, it's something that has to be done to survive. when i get the time, answering email is nice, but it's still not the same as doing whatever i want, like surfing the net randomly or something, you know?

if we didn't have kalyani working for us doing the cleaning & ironing etc & if i was cooking every night instead of buying food as we usually do, then i'd have exactly zero time to myself (aside from going to the gym which, the same as i previously mentioned, really isn't 'me time') & i'd be totally furstrated all the time because not only would i have no time to relax or do something just for me, i'd not even be able to keep up with the housework since smiley simply won't let me do anything without him. if, on the odd occasion when i do a load of laundry on the weekend when (kalyani does five days a week for us) then it's a struggle to get even one load hung up before smiley's spazzing out & i'm totally frustrated at trying to make him wait just a few more minutes until i'm done.

so i'm not complaining really (even though it sort of sounds like it), i'm just making a record for some time in the future when one day smiley's not so dependant on me & i can look back & wonder what i did with my time.

this entry itself has taken about twenty-four hours to write up & has been using pretty much all my spare few minutes here & there. as it is, once i've published this & double-checked for grammar & typos, i'll be due to wake up in less than thirty minutes to go to the gym, so i'd better go for a nap.

comment posted by melissa on May 22, 2006 04:10 PM:
wow you are definately a busy girl but sounds like a great

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