5:30: Wake up to husband's alarm
5:45: Wake up to alarm again
6:30: Actually get out of bed exhausted and with lower back pain. Get coffee. Let dog out. Go find dog when he won't come in. Get on email and try to enjoy coffee. Make list of things to do for the day.
7:15: Monster gets up, freaks out because he lost his toys the night before for not cleaning them up. Calm Monster down. Help him find toys he has not lost. Build space ships. Get more coffee. Let dog out again. Build more space ships. Go find the damned dog. Walk back into the clean computer room to find the ONE toy my son is able to use spread out all over the place. Help gather them into a sort of pile. Hear Sunshine wake up. Get another cup of coffee. Go get Sunshine. Watch her and Monster play peek-a-boo. Change Sunshine's diaper. Head back downstairs. Watch as Sunshine immediately goes for the space ships Monster built. Intervene before WWIII breaks out. Find out what Monster wants for breakfast since Sunshine is STILL eating lunch from the day before (new rule in our house is if you don't eat it when you get it, you'll keep getting it until you eat it). Get kids breakfast. Change Sunshine's diaper, again. Round kids up to sit down for breakfast. Empty dishwasher from night before. Take out recycling. Feed dog. Let dog out. Battle Sunshine to eat. Take Sunshine's food away, again, and tell her she'll get it for lunch. Get Sunshine dressed. Get me dressed. Brush my teeth. Find the stupid dog. Try to hurry Monster up with breakfast because we have to get out of the house. Gather breakfast dishes. Gather up towels to try to get them in the wash. Monster gets dressed. Load up recyclables to take in. Load up bags for people and places. Find library books to return. Find bag for library books. Find kids summer reading sheets. Initial summer reading sheets. Put reading sheets in bag. Put library bag in car. Grab list off counter. Put shoes on Monster and Sunshine. Load Monster and Sunshine into car. Make phone call to make sure stop one will be home. Remember I have to lock gate for furry baby and run back into house and upstairs to do that. See pile of towels as I'm coming back down. Grab towels and run down the basement and quickly throw them in washer. Come back up and finally get in car.
9:00 Leave house. Run out to stop #1 to drop stuff off. Chat a bit. Head to stop #2, which is recycling. Wait in line to check in. Park. Unload Monster. Unload recycling. Supervise Monster with his pile of recycling while trying to run through mine. Load up glass bin and get back in car. Head to stop #3. Library. Find a stupid spot (anyone from this area knows how crazy library parking is). Unload both kids and books (yet forget the books in the trunk for the book sale...). Hike to the library. Go check to see if we have holds. We don't. Go see the guinea pig. Go turn in our summer reading sheets. Try to pick out only one book each for their reward. (Now, as a side note, this is MUCH harder than it sounds. Each of my children had to go through EACH book and figure out if they wanted it. Out of a ton of appropriate books, both my kids seemed to only pick out inappropriate books.) Finally decide on books and show the books to that stupid guinea pig. Head out and hike back down to car. (Here is where I realized I forgot the books for the sale). Debated on hiking back up to take books. Decided against it. Loaded both kids up. Headed out to stop #4. Dropped off bag of books and coloring books to the Children's Center. Next, stop #5. Dropped stuff off at a friend's house. While dropping stuff off, decided to do an impromptu stop at Hobby Lobby for cake pop supplies. So, stop #6, Hobby Lobby. Unload kids. Try to usher them to the back of the store where the cake pop stuff is. Get stuff. Kids fight over holding the stuff. End up getting more stuff than I needed just so both kids could hold things. Maneuvered my way to the checkout. Rounded up children and headed out. Loaded both kids back up. Off to stop #7. Sally's Beauty for green hair gel. Unloaded both kids. Ran into store. Immediately asked for the gel so I didn't have to mess around with looking up and down isles. Rounded kids up and headed back to car. Loaded both kids up. Headed to stop #8. Target. My "biggest" stop. Unloaded kids. Saw a two seater cart and sent Monster after it. Someone got there before him. Sunshine screamed when I tried to cram her into a regular cart after the promise of the two-seater. Dug list out of purse. Smooth sailing until we hit the cheese. Negotiated two different types of cheese so each child could, once again, hold their own. Found smallest check out line and got out. Saw no one was at Starbucks. Ran and got a Venti Soy Chai. Headed back out to car. Loaded Monster in, unloaded bags, loaded Sunshine in, headed out. Only two more stops Mommy promised some hungry kids. On to stop #9. Another friend's to drop something off. Someone was walking into her house, so I handed off the bag and was on my way. Stop #10! Last one! Friend wasn't home so left a bag on the porch.
11:30 Finally home. Unload bags. Come back and unload kids. Let the dog out. Unpack bags and put stuff away. Make lunch for kids. Change another diaper. Get kids situated for lunch. Remember my Chai in the car. Go get it. Sit down for 5 seconds and take a sip. Dog wants in. Go sit back down. Monster needs more to eat. Get it. Sit down. Sunshine wants what Monster has. Argue with the two year old about her not getting anything else until she finishes the food she didn't eat at breakfast. Take another sip. Monster needs more food. Get it. Sit down. Sunshine finishes food from breakfast and wants lunch food. Get back up. Decide while I'm up I should also probably get myself something to eat. Find some hummus and pita. Kids want it. Divide that up. Get back up to find more food for me. Give up.
12:15....Seriously? It's only 12:15 now?!?! Both kids finally done. Clean up lunch dishes and table. Decide it's a good time to vacuum. Vacuum all of downstairs and decide to do upstairs, too. Kids jumping around playing "the vacuum is going to get us game". Most of house done. Empty and put vacuum away. Get Sunshine on potty. Takes her dear old time. Send Monster to the other potty to hurry things along. Have each kid pick two books for nap. Read books. Sing songs. Kiss Monster. Go to Sunshine's room. Rock her a bit and kiss her goodnight.
12:40 Head downstairs. Realize I didn't finish chai. Grab it and head to the computer to check and send emails. All is quiet. Figure that, since it's been 3 days with no shower, now would be a good time. Go up to tell Monster I'll be in the shower. He's sound asleep Whoo hoo!! Take a nice LONG shower.
1:20 Think of all the stuff I have to still do. Wonder why I have accomplished nothing. Then, realized that I did more in my morning than some people do in a day, and I did it with two kids in tow. Decide to write about that.
Monster got up in the middle of writing, so the rest of my day is a blur. It involved laundry, cleaning, letting the dog in and out. Cleaning up dog poop and Sunshine poop. And then headed out with friends.
This was a quiet day. An easy day. Everyone behaved. Things went smoothly. Most days are not like that. Most days I'm lucky to know my own name. But, days that run smoothly, I'm convinced I can do anything...and a hell of a lot better and more efficiently than most people.