Scheduling

Writing my first blog post seemed like it would be such an easy task. For anyone that knows me, they know I like to talk a lot, so I felt as though it would be easy to have something to say. Boy was I wrong. I had been staring at a flashing bar, racking my brain for something that I felt compelled to share. That’s when it hit me. With three young kids at home it is hard to find time to do anything for yourself but with a great scheduling system in place, at the end of the day I still find time to unwind after the kids are all in bed.

When we had our twins, who are now 2 years old, they were the first kids to join our household. The pregnancy did not go as planned and we delivered 5 weeks early. They spent 9 days in the NICU, which I credit for giving us one of the greatest parenting tips, scheduling! From the time they were born they were on a strict feeding schedule of every 3 hours just to put on weight. As they got older we also started scheduling their naps and bedtime when we were allowed to stop waking them in the middle of the night for feeding. I truly believe scheduling is what has helped the twins to sleep through the night since they were 4 months old. Life has unexpected curves in the road so it isn’t feasible to have a strict schedule every day of their lives, but we try to stick to it the best we can. The twins are now two years old and they are still very much scheduled. We wake, eat, nap, and bedtime around the same times everyday.

When we had our youngest son who is now 3 months old, we thought we would never be able to stick with scheduling as now we had the twins running around, but so far, so good. He has slept through the night since he was about one month old! He eats every three hours starting at 6 am, so we are able to schedule our appointments or travel around his feeding schedule. At this point he still naps when he wants to, but eventually he will start being awake more and we will start scheduling his naps. If you don’t use a schedule for your kids and that works for you that is great! Scheduling is just what we have chose to do, and it seems to work for our family so I wanted to share. In no way shape or form does this mean that the routine or lack of routine that you choose to do is better or worse. I just wanted to share what works for our family!

A typical day for us starts at 6am for baby and 7:30-8am for the twins and has the twins in bed at 8pm and baby goes down at 8:30pm. That gives my husband and I some time to do our own nightly routines and get our house back in order just to start the chaos back over in the morning. Scheduled chaos that is!

Sample Schedule for 2 Year Old

Twins weekend schedule-

7:30-8am wake

8:15- breakfast

8:45-11:30- play

11:30- pick up toys

12pm- eat lunch

1-3pm- nap

3pm- snack

3:30-5:30- play

5:30- pick up toys

6- supper

6:30-7:30- play

7:30 pick up toys

7:45- brush teeth, jammies on

8pm- bedtime

Signing off,

Xo- one tired mama