a day in HER life [Andie]

I'm Andie.  My daughter Amaris is 3.5 and my son Makaio just turned 5.  Amaris goes to preschool 2 days a week and Makaio is in a full day kindergarden program.  I have my own floral design business, working from a home studio doing weddings and events.  I'm married to Jon.  He works a Monday to Friday 9-5 job and he walks to and from work each way.  This is an average day during a non-floral event week while Amaris is home.

Somewhere between 6:00-7:00am the kids are awake and the Gong Show begins.  I wake up at some point in there depending on how loud the kids are…Next I go pee and brush my teeth.  I can't do anything unless those things happen first.  I can't do anything without clean teeth. Depending on the timing of all the morning, this always varies… So it is sometime between 7:00 and 7:45am that the kids go to the bathroom, brush teeth, get dressed, do hair, make beds, put pjs away, etc.  This is followed by us being downstairs for breakfast by 7:45am

7:50am  Kids eat breakfast, I make Makaio's lunch for school while they eat, empty dishwasher from the night before.

8:15am  Makaio downstairs to go out the door with Jon to go to the bus stop for school

8:25am  Makaio actually leaves to go out the door with Jon

8:30am  I eat breakfast

8:45am  Tidy morning dishes and then putter around tidying upstairs from the morning Gong Show

9:15am  Get workout gear on and either go out for a walk with Amaris or do a workout video at home.   Amaris will sometimes do the videos with me if we stay home, if not she has independent play time.

10:15am  Shower, Get dressed and get pretty, Amaris plays on her own.

10:45am  Check email, Amaris plays

11:00am  Run errands, Go to grocery store, Do housework, Have appointments (Amaris has speech therapy once a week).

12:30pm Make lunch while Amaris watches a show or plays on the ipad then eat and then clean up dish and mess from that meal. Amaris eats for almost a full hour - she takes a long time.

1:30pm Quiet Time for Amaris which is just more independent play and I do some Dandie Andie Floral Designs.  Work includes writing blog posts, following up with clients, planning events, prepare for consultations, researching trends and techniques, administrative tasks, social media and keeping on top of everything to run my business.  Amaris sometimes needs guidance during this time and will need activities provided for her, busy bags, colouring or other quiet activities.

3:00pm  Tidy up work and Amaris' Quiet Time Mess

3:10pm  Get shoes on to go get Makaio from the bus stop.

3:19pm  Get Makaio at the bus stop then play outside: go to the park, ride bikes, scooter, backyard, etc.

4:30pm  Come inside and kids play together or have independent play depending on how everyone is doing.  Sometimes this is Wii, movie or TV or Ipad time.  But this is always when I need a Diet Coke to keep me going.  This is also my 30 minutes of miscellaneous where its a mix of doing something on my list to do or occupying the kids.  I hate these 45 minutes before Jon gets home.  Makaio is tired after a full day at school, and they are tired of playing outside for an hour and are ready to come in…. So it's a gamble.  Never know.  I do something around the house or play a game with the kids or make them colour or go fix something or do an activity with them or have them do some worksheets or do some more work work or do some cleaning or get going on the laundry or sometimes I turn on the TV a little early.

5:00pm  I start getting dinner ready and for the kids - TV Time!  Yay!  Kids choose a show to watch while I'm busy in the kitchen and we wait for daddy to get home.

5:15pm  Jon arrives home.  BEST TIME OF DAY.

Sometime between 5:30 and 6:00pm  Eat dinner when it's ready
After dinner is Daddy lead play time - play a game, do an activity, go for a walk, burn off some energy, run around, go to the park, play with some toys, baths on bath nights. I start to tidy up from dinner, put food away, start doing dishes, etc.

7:00pm  Both parents do the bed time routine - PJs, Teeth, Bathroom, Stories, Prayers, Lights Out // Other nights I would be leaving the house at this point to go out to work and meet clients for consultations and Jon would do the bedtime routine on his own. This usually ends up being one night a week.  I often will take one evening a week to go work outside the home even if I don't have a meeting just to work outside of the house.  One night a week Jon teaches drum lessons and then goes out with friends after and I do the bedtime routine on my own.

7:30pm  Lights Off for both kids.  This time usually creeps to being later in the summer.  Jon usually picks up from where I left off and finishes tidying kitchen.  Then my evening routine begins of tidying the house, picking up toys, folding laundry, doing laundry, putting things away, etc.  I like to have things tidy before I actually relax for the evening.

8:30pm  We both sit down and put our feet up and relax.  And by relax I mean, work begins again for me.  We will sometimes put the TV on and I multitask by working more on my computer picking up where I left off in the afternoon and watch a show.  We currently trying to go on a date every few weeks and work that into the schedule as well.  We try and have no-work nights and attempt to read books, play games, or do other things that are not on our computers, working or watching TV… But sometimes watching an old episode of The Office eating a tasty cookie and going to bed is just perfect.  So what we do in this time frame changes frequently as well.

10:00pm Get ready for bed.

10:15pm Usually play on our iphones in bed and check our facebook and email one more time before going to sleep…. Just in case.  I know, it's terrible.

10:30pm Lights off.

There's my day!