working mommy wednesday

How important to you, as a working mom, is a schedule/routine for your kids?

This prompt is from last week. I really wanted to write about it, but ran out of time for blogging! So, I'm doing this one instead of the prompts for this week. :)

A schedule or routine isn't just important for Nate but also for ME!

If Nate gets off his schedule, he is grumpy because it usually means he's missing a nap or getting a nap at the wrong time causing all sorts of other issues. This would be the case even if I weren't working. He's 18 months old; he needs to stick to his routine. We've been having some issues with this lately because of switching back to daycare. The class he's in right now at daycare takes a morning nap and an afternoon nap. Except on rare occasions, Nate's a 1 nap kind of guy. He goes down for nap right after lunch. With Rodgers' work schedule, Nate usually gets to daycare as the kids are getting up from morning nap, but when Rodgers works in the morning, as he did yesterday (gotta give the guy props - he worked a double shift) Nate has to take morning nap with the other kids. Then, he sleeps for 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the afternoon, and he never really gets the good naptime rest he needs during the day. Even when he doesn't have morning nap it is hard on him because afternoon nap is a couple of hours after lunch. Even though he's been doing this for 6 weeks, he can't really adjust to the schedule 100% because of weekends and those few days when Rodgers has to take him early. It's tough for the poor little guy.

As for me, if I get off my schedule, things don't get done.

Saturday, Nate and I got to go out of town and see some of my family. It was a great day, but it meant that I didn't do my usual Saturday cooking. Usually, I meal plan on Saturdays, too. We'll have 3 meals cooked, usually 2 on Saturday and 1 on Thursday when Rodgers is off, and eat leftovers the rest of the week. Rodgers eats his meals at lunch because he works 2nd shift, and Nate and I eat at supper.

I realized late Sunday night that we didn't have any food cooked for this week. Nate and I eat supper as soon as we get home from work. It's not like I could just cook on Monday after work, we needed to eat before that would happen. Besides that, Rodgers needed lunch for Monday (yes, he does cook, but I like to have his lunch ready for him to heat up). So I ended up staying up late Sunday cooking 1 meal for this week. I made enough to last through Tuesday. We eat supper at church Wednesdays so at least we had something different to eat today. Rodgers will cook something new tomorrow. :) We are, at this very moment, discussing what that will be.

Remember when I used to clean house on a schedule? That went out the window when I started working again. I kept up with it last year while I was working, but then, I wasn't pregnant last year. I kept up with it when I was pregnant and not working. I still have the chores in our online calendar, and this week, I've started trying to get back into the habit. (Today is laundry day, BTW, and Rodgers already did it! He makes my life so much easier.) Our house hasn't been going uncleaned, it's just been a bit more ad hoc lately, rather than staying clean like it used to.

So the moral of the story is: if Nate gets off his schedule, naps are messed up, and he is a fussy grumpy kid who throws a tantrum every 90 seconds. If Mama gets off her schedule, we have to figure out what we're going to eat on the fly and clean house only when it becomes too awful to live in, and Rodgers has to do a lot more of these tasks, even though he worked 16 hours in a row yesterday. He never complains and really doesn't seem to care. But, schedules greatly reduce my stress.