Day In The Life (The Weekend) - Fall 2014

I already wrote a Day in the Life post for fall 2014, but I wanted to document another day - a weekend day - when Andi was home with us. Sometimes I feel like I lead two separate lives; weekdays when I do the bulk of child-rearing and Andi works long hours at the office, and weekends when Andi and I hit pause and soak in as much family time as possible.

Here's a day in our (weekend) life - Saturday, October 25, 2014

Andi and Heather are both 33 years old
Tory is 3 years, 1 month old
Aden is 11 months old

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The exact times are fuzzy, but somewhere around 1:00am Tory cries out "Mom! I have to potty!" from her bedroom on the middle-level floor of our lake cabin. I stumble out of bed (literally stumble; I may have had too much wine the night before as Andi and I were listening to old-school Jack Johnson and hanging pictures in our newly remodeled cabin. I was having blast-from-the-past memories listening to our favorite "first months of dating" songs, and we were both giddy with excitement over our new digs). I help Tory use the restroom and in a moment of weakness, let her crawl into bed with us. We fall back asleep quickly, but awake around 3:00am to Tory dream-crying, "I want butter!" (seriously, child?) and again around 5:00am to her shouting, "Daddy! Who is your best friend?" over and over. This child is delusional in the night (or possessed, or talks in her sleep ... or something!) because these middle-of-the-night outbursts are, sadly, a common occurrence.

Tory finally wakes up for the morning around 7:00am. She, Andi and I cuddle in bed and talk as we watch the sun rise outside our bedroom window. Straight ahead, we gaze upon a rustic scene of yellow sun peeking through the trees, and to the side of the bed see the sun rising over the lakefront.

Our beautiful (wonderful! delightful!) boy, Aden, is still sleeping in his room on the middle-level of the cabin. He's slept all night long. Love this trend! (Now, I wish his three-year-old sister would get the memo). Within minutes, around 7:30am, Aden starts cooing in his crib. We all get out of bed; Andi heads to the kitchen to make coffee, and Tory and I walk down to Aden's room to retrieve him.

7:40am: Andi makes breakfast for us in the kitchen while I lounge on the living room floor with the kids. We play with stacking cups and a plastic Solo cup, and Tory and Aden wrestle around on the living room floor. Tory's being especially rough with Aden this morning, and I have to call her down a few times. That's not like her at all. She whines at Andi's feet in the kitchen to let her help him make breakfast.

8:00am: The four of us sit down at the dining room table and have breakfast together. Andi made hash potatoes and banana pancakes, along with eggs and toast for the kids. We eat and drink coffee, and it's a really nice meal together.

8:30am: I sit on the living room floor and tackle each kid to get them dressed for the day. Aden's fussing, so I ask Andi to make me a bottle in the kitchen and bring it over to us. Aden and I curl up on the floor with the leather ottoman to my back, and watch the wildlife outside the window as he drinks his morning bottle. There's four white swans flying in pairs around the islands, circling and circling, and two brown ducks floating on the water's surface.

9:00am: I lay Aden down in his crib for a morning nap in his bedroom. Tory requests to watch "Mickey Christmas" on Netflix. I set her up with the show in our bedroom. Andi goes outside to mow the yard and I have a seriously rare few minutes of quiet in the house. I'm feeling super lazy and sit in the big oversized leather chair with coffee and my iPhone, and surf my favorite social media sites for a while.

10:15am: Aden wakes up from his nap, so I bring him back to the living room to play. Tory decides to have a snack of cheese and crackers. I love how peaceful it is at our cabin on the weekends. She's sitting nicely at the table, looking out the window as she eats.

The kids play together on the floor while we wait for Andi to finish yard work. 

11:30am: Andi and I decide to take everyone for a "truck ride," so we bundle up the kids in coats and hats. It's a gorgeous fall day in the high 50's, but it'll be chilly / windy with exposed skin in the Ranger ATV. Tory requests a trip through the woods and shouts to Andi as he drives, "What do we do if we see a branch? Run it over! What do we do if we see a puddle? Splash it!" Ha ha. Like father; like daughter.

Noon: We stop for lunch at Staples Lake Bar & Grill, not far from our lake cabin. I brought such a random mix of food to the cabin for us to eat. Typically, I meal plan and buy groceries and Andi does most of the cooking on the weekends, but I just didn't get to it this week. No worries, though. Lunch out to eat. Andi and I toast the weekend over a Spotted Cow beer (for her) and a rum and Coke (for him).

Staples Lake is a new establishment in our rotation at the cabin on the weekends. The restaurant recently switched owners and we're giving it a fair shake. Andi and I have eaten here twice now, and the food's been really good and the service, excellent. Today, the owner is so sweet with Tory and brings her a Crayola Color Wonders coloring book and markers to play with at the table. Tory is enamored with this lady, and proceeds to tell her all about our life including upcoming trips to visit friends, our weekend plans, and what she'll be for Halloween. Shy, Tory is not.

Roadies: Diet Coke, Root Beer and a sippy cup of water to-go.

1:00pm: After lunch, our crew loads back into the ATV and treks back to the cabin for afternoon nap time. Both kids fall asleep quickly after a bottle of formula for Aden and a few books for Tory. Andi's on the phone with Delta booking our Nebraska flights for Christmas, so after I'm done putting the kids down for nap, I curl up next to him on the couch. I'm so cozy snuggled under his arm with a warm throw blanket wrapped around me, I fall asleep for the first afternoon nap I can remember taking in a long time.

2:30pm: I wake up to hear Aden crying from his crib. I try to plug his pacifier back in his mouth, but he's having none of it. I check on Tory and she's still sleeping, so I bring Aden back upstairs. I find Andi snuggled up in our bed asleep, too! A quadruple nap achieved this afternoon; if that's not a perfect Saturday, I don't know what is.

The only ones awake now: a post-nap selfie.

3:15pm: Tory wakes up from her nap and shortly there-after Andi does, too. After much pleading by Tory, I agree to go downstairs to play toys with her in the lower level. We used to keep all the kids' toys in our upstairs living room, but now we've remodeled I'd like to keep the toy garbage out of sight. Of course, Tory doesn't want to play downstairs by herself so, thus far, my plan isn't working. While I'm down there, I decide to re-arrange the furniture and re-organize the toys. Aden plays in the pink Cozy Coupe car and Tory plays dress-up alongside me. Meanwhile, Andi is outside sucking up leaves.

4:30pm: Somewhere around this time, our cabin friends Oscar and Deanna stop by with their grown kids and their kids' significant others to see our new cabin updates. Andi makes everyone a cocktail and we catch up over drinks around the dining room table. We miss our friends at the lake so much! It's been a few weeks since everyone's been together.

5:30pm: Our friends leave, and I finish cleaning up the toy mess downstairs while Andi makes dinner. That's three meals I haven't cooked today, for the record. Man, I love weekends! Andi calls us all upstairs a few minutes later and plates us grilled chicken, scalloped potatoes and stuffing. It's kind of a smorgasbord dinner but again, I didn't bring much for groceries this weekend so Andi raided the cupboards and threw something together. Fine by me! Aden scarfs down pasta noodles, crackers, and sliced apples (no wonder he was flipping out a few minutes beforehand; the boy was hungry!) and Tory takes two bites of chicken before requesting butter and jelly toast - typical. I cave and make her toast, because I'm a slacker parent like that. No sense battling over food at the dinner table.

6:15pm: Andi and I tag-team dinner clean up. I am so not complaining because he made dinner, cleaned it up AND loaded the dishwasher, but this is totally the difference between Andi and I:

I pre-wash all dishes before loading them into the dishwasher because they never get quite clean enough otherwise. Also for my liking, all dishes must me loaded in an organized fashion (big plates and little plates together, all facing the same direction, etc.). Andi loads the dishwasher with plates and cups mixed together, and a baking dish of cheesy potatoes still caked onto the pan. Do I care? Nope.* He loaded the dishwasher, and I'm grateful for the help.

*Well, okay, I'm a little twitchy about it so I snap a picture and move on. Marriage = picking your battles, and accepting help wherever it's given.

6:30pm: Tory's got two-day-old yogurt in her hair and Aden's a mess from eating, so Andi offers to shower the kids. I agree to towel them off and dress them in pajamas if he'll wash them. We don't have a bathtub at the cabin, so one of us usually has to shower with the kids or sometimes they don't get a bath all weekend. Tonight, it's teamwork.

7:00pm: I set Tory up with a repeat showing of Mickey Christmas in the master bedroom, the Aden and I snuggle up on the couch as I feed him his bedtime bottle. Andi lounges in the sofa chair beside us. Aden is so tired after taking such a short nap this afternoon and falls asleep in my arms. I carry him downstairs to his bedroom and tuck him in for the night (all night, fingers crossed).

Andi and I chat together in the living room while Tory finishes watching her show. More kid quiet-time; a rarity, and so awesome.

7:30pm: Bedtime for Tory. She reads me a few of her books - a counting book, Minnie Garden Days and Minnie and Daisy's Day Out. She asks if I'll re-read her the last one in her bed before she goes to sleep. We head down to her bedroom together and discover we can't find Lambie, her beloved stuffed animal. Andi and I turn the cabin upside down looking for Lambie, dang it. Can't find that stuffed animal anywhere! I sneak into Aden's room and steal the Glo-Worm from his crib. I tell Tory that Aden said she could borrow it for tonight. Thankfully she agrees, and I'm shocked there wasn't more of a bedtime battle.

8:30pm: Andi and I lounge around in the living room by the fire; he reads a book on his Kindle iPhone app and I type up this blog post. We marvel over having an end table we can both reach to set our drinking glasses on while we hang out in the living room (while, ironically, Andi balances his whiskey glass on the arm of the chair). It really is the little things in life ....

9:00pm: Kids are still asleep in the beds. Andi falls asleep snuggled under a blanket in front of the fire. I finish blogging listening to music softly playing in the background. What an amazingly relaxing day as a family. Absolutely perfect!

Now, I'm about to wake Andi and invite him to crawl into our comfy bed where I'll read my book until I drift to sleep myself. Good-night!