When I got married, I was still working and life was sort of the same everyday. Woke up at 7am, dressed up and left for work. My life was at work, the whole day. So then I came home at 6pm and started cooking, washing the clothes, we had dinner, I washed the dishes, I dusted a room or two, mopped the floor and had a shower. Then it was time for a movie, so we watched tv at 9.30pm and then slept at around 11.30pm. Everyday was a routine.
Since then, my life has turned upside down. When I had Jaimee 9 years ago, most of my friends had had their first baby too. So we talked a lot about what we did during the day, what the kids ate and at what time etc etc. They seemed to all have a routine. They washed their babies at 5pm for example every single day at the same time. I realised that I was a mess. I used to wash Jaimee at 6pm, sometimes at 9pm, sometimes at 4.30pm. Everyday was different. It depends really what we were doing in the evening, her mood, our schedule.....
I remember I had panicked and decided to do a programme and stick to it. I googled morning routine with kids. At that moment it seemed to me as if the whole world had a schedule with timings and did everything according to plan and I didn't. I started jotting down what I did with Jaimee with timings and tried to start following it. I forgot what was written then, coz nearly 10 years passed. But I remember I was going crazy, coz our life wasn't a routine. It was very stressful juggling to stick to the timings.
I took Jaimee out every single day. We woke up, whatever time that was. She had breakfast, or at least I tried to give it to her, while she spit it out! I then took her to the playground. Sometimes she had lunch first, then we went to the playground. Or took lunch with me there. Or I met my friends for a coffee, later or earlier. She didn't have a nap always at the same time, if you can call those 15 minutes she slept a nap. But all my friends met me just before or right after their kids' nap. Wow, they were like a clock.
I realised that routine was not for me. So I started doing whatever at any time of the day. With Sam and Aimee I am also a mess. I asked my Instagram followers if their life was a routine or not. Guess what? The majority is like me, around 70%. That made me feel so much better.
Sometimes I feel that my kids without a routine, adapt themselves to anything. Coz they are not constantly waiting for us to do what should be done. Life is actually a surprise. Shit happens all the time, mostly to a mum of three like me.
You don't realise what a baby after two kids goes through. Aimee is a yo-yo. I take Jaimee and Sam to places and have to wake her up every single time. If she sleeps in the car while I am driving, I have to get her out, so she wakes up. My kids are used to eating in different places. If they are hungry at 4pm and I know I am going to be out, I take the food with me. So they are used to eating everywhere.
I do have a schedule at the back of my mind, but I don't care at what time things are done, as long as they are done. I realised that sleeping a lot and eating a lot are a waste of time at this moment of my life. I am sleeping between 4 to 6 hours a night, and eating to live and not living to eat. Eating takes up a lot of my day, preparing the food, eating, cleaning up! If I don't eat too much, I don't have to do a lot of working out too. I am only doing 10 minutes every other day and sometimes a 5 km jog.
I don't time how much my kids spend playing, or on an educational activity. If they are bored we stop, if they are happy they go on. Then if we have to do something, they have to stop of course.
Moral to the story, the older you get, the more you realise you don't care if you are doing things as they should be done, by the book. As long as they work for me and my kids, it's just fine. Schedules, rules, plans... all these were made by human beings, therefore they are not always the perfect thing for me to follow.