Broken bus and a new strategy

Note: I am writing a lot of my posts on my iPad on the bus to work and it is hard to make posts pretty and not make grammar mistakes.  I try my best to re-edit when I get to a real computer, but sometimes that's not for a while.  So I apologize for all the mistakes!

You know it's gonna be a bad day when your bus breaks down and you're going to be an hour late for work.  It's especially annoying because I leave the house at 6am and then the next bus doesn't show up until 7am.  I could have used that extra hour of sleep people.  Instead I'm standing out in the cold waiting for nothing.  It also makes my day feel all discombobulated.  Grr.  Time to put my positive pants on though and just shake it off.  Or look at cute pictures of Evan sharing a clover he found.

Yesterday I had a slight epiphany.  If I wait to take my morning shower until the late afternoon, I don't have to shower this morning.  That saves me so much time. I slept in for an entire half hour longer.  It was glorious.  On Wednesdays I work from home so no one notices if I don't shower.  Then I shower when hubs gets home and I head to class in the evening.  As long as I don't spill chemical substances all over me, I am still clean the next morning.  Why didn't I think of this earlier?

I am still yawning though.  Enough sleep was still not had.  Evan woke up right as I was going to head to bed and I knew I could have put him back to sleep but I decided I wanted to snuggle with him.  Now with class two nights a week and work and golf, I feel like I never see him.  I make sure to snuggle and play with him constantly when I am home, but sometimes I miss him and just want to cuddle at night.  Plus, he likes to hold my hand when he's sleeping so what is more precious than that??  Nothing.  Except maybe him trying to eat a nectarine by himself.

I had a chat with a bunch of my co-workers about raising bilingual kids and I have a feeling it's gonna be a big challenge.  They are all native speakers and were talking about how none of their children speak Spanish well and usually only speak English at home and school.  One of my co-workers has her daughter in a full immersion school but there are not many of those around.  I'd really like Evan to know Spanish, so I am debating speaking to him in Spanish rather than English.  Then at least it would be Spanish at home all the time...until he gets bigger and decides he doesn't want to speak Spanish at all.  Which I guess is common.  We'll just have to make sure we take him to Honduras so he is forced to speak Spanish. 

Ok, I don't have much more to say.  Of course since I'm not on my regular bus I'm not tired enough to go to bed.  So I guess I'll try and finish up Shucked, my book club book.

Have a fantastic Thursday!

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Anyone else out there trying to raise bilingual kids?  Anyone been successful?

Does it mess your entire day up when you get a late sort in the morning?

Any other night showerers??

Organizing my Life

Remember how I said that one of my New Year’s resolutions commitments was to be more organized?  Well, I tried it for an entire week, so I thought I’d report back to you.  I was quite happy with how it went and it definitely made my life a LOT easier.

Last Saturday I made a list of all the recipes I was going to cook during the week.  Then I looked at each recipe and assigned days to cook them based on time and simplicity.  Then I wrote down how I could “prep” the recipe to make it even quicker.

On Sunday I prepped pork for the week (Tuesday’s dinner) and made a crock pot meal (Monday’s meal).   Here is all the stuff sitting in the crock pot, waiting to be cooked.  In case you’re interested, this was Crock Pot Picadillo from Gina over at Gina’s Skinny Recipes.  It was yummy and Ivan loved it too.

Here I am prepping the pork with Evan in the Ergo.  Try not to be too jealous of my beautiful kitchen and lovely profile.

This helped out immensely.  I knew what we were having each day and I usually just had to boil rice or mix a sauce really quickly.  It was so nice being organized and having food choices be fairly easy.

During the week, I mapped out all the things I needed to do when I got home from work.  And I wasn’t allowed to relax until I did them.  Here is the long list of things:

1. Cuddle with Evan
2. Start laundry – diapers
3. Start dinner
4. Give Evan a bath
5. Feed Evan
6. Put Evan to bed
7. Finish dinner
8. Eat
9. Wash up dishes
10. Prepare/pack lunch for the next day
11. Wash bottles/pump
12. Stuff diapers for tomorrow
13. Pack diaper bag
14. Hang wet diapers up to dry
15. Get ready for bed
16. Go to sleep

Yes – it is SO much stuff to do.  And it pretty much takes me from the time I get home (6:30pm) until the time I go to bed (10pm) to finish it all.  Sometimes I just want to sit down and watch TV, but I know if I don’t get it done I’ll be up all night.  And sometimes at 10pm, I want to crawl into bed and read part of my book.  However, then I remember how tired I’m going to be at 4:30am and I decide that I can survive reading on the bus instead.  I am not sure what I’m going to do once classes start.  I’m not sure where I’ll fit studying in, in my busy schedule.

However, it has really helped having the list of things to do and just getting them done.  I haven’t assigned my weekend cleaning detail yet, so I have to work on that.  Although I did take my Christmas stuff down (finally) and emptied a box in the living room that I hadn’t unpacked yet. 

Also, my husband would prefer we eat before 8:30pm every night so I might try and make the food a day early (i.e. make Tuesday’s dinner on Monday).  I’m not sure if I can do that, but I’ll try and see what happens.  It is definitely much healthier to eat at 7pm than at 9pm!

I also need to fit blogging in there too – since I didn’t get to do that all week.  We’ll see!  This past weekend my parents were visiting so I didn’t put much on the schedule.  Part of being organized is being flexible, right???

How do you get it all done?

What do you do to get organized every day?

Baby Baths

Bath time!!

When we were trying to get Evan to go to sleep easier, we decided that we needed a bedtime routine.  Something that would relax him and let him know that bedtime was coming.  So, we decided that a nice warm bath would be a great part of our bedtime routine.

When we first started the routine, bath time seemed to take forever and I wondered if maybe we shouldn’t have chosen such a long activity as part of bedtime.  However, now I love bath time and I’m so happy I get to spend that time with Evan.

At first Evan wasn’t a huge fan of the bath, but now he LOVES it.  He splashes around in the water and loves when I pour water all over him.  When the bath water starts to get chilly and his toes a bit wrinkled, I get him out of the bath and dry him off on the floor.  Then I slather him with coconut oil, while kissing his cute little belly. 

After getting dressed for bed, we spend a few minutes playing in front of the mirror and combing his hair.

It sounds like such a simple routine, but it is just the best.  Hopefully bath time can remain our time as he get older.  Since I work all day now, special “us” times like this are rare. 

What’s your favorite time of the day?

Do you take a bath/shower every day?