A Day in the Life - My Friday with Paul

I've read many "day in the life" posts on others' blogs but my days always felt a little bit too 'boring' to share - especially week days when I'm gone 10 hours between work and commuting (my job isn't interesting enough to others, in my opinion, to talk about what I am doing during those 10 hours!). But when I was home on Friday with Paul I decided to capture our day in photos so I could finally do a day in the life post! Here's how we spent our day!

6:30 am - Paul wakes up for the day. Normally I would be up at 5:30 am to pump on week days but I 'sleep in' until he gets up on days I don't work. I get him a bottle and feed him while pumping. He's super wiggly after finishing his bottle so he plays on the floor while I finish pumping. I pumped for about 40 minutes that morning - on work days I only have time to pump for 30 minutes.

7:30 am - Breakfast time for Paul and me! After a hesitant start to eating, he's doing much better. He mostly eats purees, though. We give him things like peanut butter toast strips but he pretty much just plays with it.

What's for breakfast mom?

Oatmeal cereal for Paul; peanut + jelly toast and coffee for mom

While he's happy in the high chair, I figure out how much excess milk I can freeze that day. Fortunately I pump more than he eats so we have quite the freezer stash - over 1,500 oz! If my supply remains where it is, I *should* have enough frozen around Christmas time to stop pumping! Woo hoo! I might keep pumping once a day until he's a year so he can get some fresh milk each day. Frozen milk is great but it's ideal for him to get fresh milk as the antibodies in fresh milk helps him fight whatever he is exposed to in our current environment.

The milk area of our freezer. I fill a shoe box with bags of frozen milk. When the shoe box is full, they go in a gallon bag and Phil takes them to his mom's (she has a deep freeze).

 8:15 am - we are done with breakfast and it's play time for Paul!

He loves this baby faces book!

Now that he is mobile, he wants to be by Oscar. He's still army crawling as he hasn't figured out how to get up on his hands and knees. He's gotten faster at his army crawl but is still pretty slow.

Oscar is more tolerant of him than she is of other kids. She's never hissed or growled at him. But when he gets close to her, she runs away.

He has finally mastered sitting up! He was behind on this skill but that big head made it extra challenging for him!

9 am - It's time for Paul's first nap of the day. I give him a bit more milk and then put him down in his crib awake. He fusses for a bit but falls asleep pretty quickly. This is our first day of dropping down to 2 naps. He only takes 2 naps/day at daycare but at home he usually takes 3 naps. His 2nd and 3rd nap have been really short lately so we are going to try to transition to 2 naps/day.

During his nap, I work on laundry and clean our 2 bathrooms. I'm tempted to relax and read but I need to be productive today as I am planning to can salsa verde the following day so I need to get all my chores out of the way!

10:30 am - Paul wakes up from his nap. He napped for 1.5 hours so it was a good nap! I change him out of his sleeper and we cuddle for a bit. He's very very wiggly and not interested in cuddling anymore so I savor the times when he is willing to cuddle.

After giving him a bottle, I put him in the jumper while I clean the kitchen. I'm glad he still likes this toy as it's nice to 'contain' him while I clean! Gone are the days of putting him on a blanket with toys and leaving the room for more than a couple of minutes.

One reality of pumping is alllll the dishes. I feel like we are always washing bottles, jars that we keep the milk in, and pump parts.

11:30 am - The kitchen is clean so it's time for lunch! Paul has some pureed sweet potatoes and pears and I have leftover lentil soup.

Sweet potato mustache

 After lunch I fold another basket of laundry while Paul plays on the carpet. He's more interested in the laundry basket than his toys, though.

After the laundry is folded and our bed is made, I read some books to Paul. Little Blue Truck is definitely his favorite!

Then it's more floor time for Paul. One of his favorite games is to push the truck and then follow it. He does this with his ball as well. It's so cute to watch!

1:30 pm - Time for his 2nd nap of the day. I sit down to pump and pump for about 35 minutes.

After that, I get his diapers in the wash. We are still loving cloth diapering. It's a bit grosser now that he's eating solids. But we bought a diaper sprayer last month so that has helped make dealing with poopy diaper much easier. We just spray them in the toilet.

After getting the diapers in the wash, I end up laying down in bed to read my book until he wakes up. Our room is across the hall from his room so we don't need a baby monitor up there as we can clearly hear him cry.

2:30 pm - He's up after an hour nap which is decent but not as long of a nap as I would have liked! I give Paul a bottle and then we spend more time playing on his blanket.

4:30 pm - Daddy gets home. And then I slack off on taking pictures for the rest of the day. Whoops!

6:30 pm - We put Paul to bed. Our bedtime routine is pretty quick. He eats a bottle downstairs and then we go upstairs to bed. I put lotion on him and put him in his night time diaper, sleeper, and sleep sack (every other day he takes a bath but he had one on Thursday). Phil and I take turns reading him a book each night, then we put him down in the crib awake. Some nights we read 2 books - it depends on how tired he is. Friday night is my turn to read and we only get through one book - Good Night Moon. I'm honestly not a huge fan of this book but he seems to love it. It was also Phil's favorite book when he was a baby and one of his first words was "moon." So I guess Paul is taking after daddy with his love of this book!

6:45 pm - Phil and I warm up leftover stir fry and we eat dinner on the couch and catch up on our days.

7:30 pm - I pump while we watch a couple episodes of season 1 of Catastrophe on Amazon Prime. We don't love the show but it's entertaining enough to keep us engaged. We have the hardest time finding shows we both like!

8:30 pm - I head up to bed to read before turning in around 9:15. My bedtime is pretty early these days as I know Paul is going to be up a couple of times. We still split the nights - I handle wake ups before 2am and Phil handles wake ups after 2am.

9:30 pm - Paul is up and hungry. I wish we could get him to go longer before his first night feeding but we've tried letting him cry for a bit and he will crying for 10-15+ minutes so I feel like he's truly hungry. Some day he'll sleep through the night but it seems a looooong way off for us. :/ One upside to his night wake ups is that he is cuddly during this time. After I feed him I usually lay back on the guest bed with Paul on my chest which is the best feeling.

All in all it was a really good day. If it had been nicer outside, we would have gone for a walk at some point but it was snowy/icy and cold. Now that he's down to 2 naps and awake for 2.5-3 hours, it would be ideal to get out and do something like go to the library but I couldn't motivate myself to leave our warm house! I got 3 loads of laundry and all of my cleaning done so it was an especially productive day!