I figured since I am asking other people to write about a day in their lives, I should probably write about my own day! I’ve written a few of these posts before, but since the last one a lot has changed in my life… So here is a day in my life…
05:30: the electric heater on the other side of the wall clicks on and wakes me enough to register that it’s on, and that means it’s nearly time to get up. Sometimes if I’m feeling awake, I’ll sneak out of bed to switch on the heater in the bathroom which doesn’t have a timer but will make my life less cold later!
06:00: the alarm goes off. I snooze it as many times as possible, then switch the lamp and the radio on. S is usually awake by this point, and we spend a few minutes reading her Fireman Sam book before getting up. We have a shower together, and I leave S playing with the water while I get dry. My water is heated and stored in a tank, so when you’ve been in the shower for too long, it goes cold. Each morning I try to get out of the shower and clothed enough to not freeze, before going back to coax S out of the shower before it goes cold.
06:45 cue much pleading and coaxing, as I try to get S to get dressed quickly. Meanwhile, I have to finish dressing myself and dry my hair. Eventually, once both of us are dressed and have had our hair dried (S loves to play chicken with the hair dryer), we go downstairs. This is always prefaced by a game of “wait a minute, who goes down the stairs first?” – since we moved house, we have no stair gates and these new stairs are fairly steep. I go first, and lately, I usually end up carrying S any way as she seems to be going through a bit of a helpless phase.
07:00 in an ideal world, as soon as the 7am news has been read on the radio, we switch it off and come downstairs. In the real world, we’re usually about ten minutes later. We open the blind in the living room and say good morning to Ducky, a wooden duck I bought for S when we moved in here. Then she opens the door on her advent calendar and sits herself at her table to wait for breakfast.
I open the kitchen blind and pop some bread in the toaster, making myself a coffee while it cooks and preparing S a drink of Ribena. She has peanut butter on toast, cut into triangles with a sprinkling of raisins for breakfast most mornings.
07:30 Having given S her toast a minimum of ten minutes ago, I now begin to remind her it needs to be eaten or we’ll be late for nursery. She often plays with her food and tends to eat the peanut butter before taking strategic bites to turn her toast in to crocodiles or penguins, and then playing. On a nursery morning though, we don’t have time for snap-snap-snapping unless we were up early.
07:45 If breakfast has been finished/abandoned in time, we put an ornament on our advent Christmas tree and wind it up to sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas. Then we get ready to go out: coat, hat, gloves, shoes. No, on the other foot. No, not like that. Why Have you taken that hat off? You want the other hat? Which one? Please put your hat on! No, don’t unbutton your coat! Come on, we have to go, we’ll be late… And on it goes. Eventually we open the kitchen door and head down the stairs to our front door. Sometimes S follows me down; other times I have to carry her.
07:50 We come out of the front door and stand on the street, deciding which way to walk to nursery. One way is slightly quicker but runs along a busy road; the other involves passing at least two shops with Christmas lights in their window, some flowers, and the cathedral. We usually go that way. We stop to look in said windows, to climb onto and jump off three sets of steps, and we point out every flower and bird we see on the way. As we turn the corner to go into nursery the cathedral comes into view and S shouts, I found the cathedral! We wander across the car park into nursery, debating who we might see today.
08:05 We are usually late with nursery drop-off. We remove the hat, coat and gloves and hang them up; S shows off her outfit to whichever member of staff is in the room, and we say hi to her friends. I usually leave her with a big kiss and a cuddle, playing with the train tracks or drawing at the table.
08:10 On a day where I don’t have a specific appointment, I will stop in the newsagent on the way home to see my friend Shell. We chat for a while, share some gossip, chat to the customers who come in. This is my socialising for the day. After a few minutes – fewer if the shop is busy – I head home.
08:30 I clear away plates etc from breakfast, put more hot water into this morning’s coffee, and sit down to work. Since we moved house, I don’t get on so well with my desk. I don’t like the position of it, and my chair doesn’t move around easily. If I have copy writing or blog writing to do, I do it on the sofa; if there is book keeping work, it is done sitting at S’s table. I try to start my day by writing a list of the things I need to accomplish that day. I usually cast some YouTube music videos from my phone onto the TV while I work. If what I’m working on is not too mentally taxing, I might watch a TV show or the news or something.
12:00 My stomach rumbles and I rummage around the kitchen for food. Sometimes I will pop into town to run errands and pick up shopping so that I don’t have to do it with S later. Then I get back to work.
15:30 I stop work, put my coat on and head back to town to collect all the things I forgot to buy earlier.
16:00 Time to collect S from nursery! I walk into the room and usually have about five seconds to see my daughter interacting with other people before I’m spotted. She jumps up with a big grin on her face, shouting Mummy! and runs over to me. Her keyworker tells me what they’ve been up to today, whether there’s anything I need to know about. I am invariably handed a wad of pictures S has drawn that day, or paintings she did yesterday that have now dried.
16:10 We leave nursery and walk home. We rarely walk straight home; even if we don’t need any shopping, we will walk the extra-long way home through town to admire the Christmas trees and lights. We have a reasonably set route through a shopping mall with an extra-tall tree, around a couple of streets with lights over head, under a big “tunnel” with lights, across the market square and perhaps around the Christmas market before we find our bearings and head for home. None of this is actually on our way home, but S loves it and it’s better entertainment than sitting her in front of a TV with the same toys she played with yesterday. We meet different people; she says hello and shows them her shoes.
17:00 I aim to be home by this time so that I can get us some tea. As it’s dark out, we say goodnight to Ducky on the window ledge, and he is laid down to sleep before the blind is closed. We usually have the wind-up Christmas tree play again, and S’s current favourite to have on the TV is Winnie the Pooh. S has had a proper meal at nursery as well as a snack, so if I don’t feel like cooking I can usually get away with a sandwich or something snacky. Sometimes she turns her nose up at all food and wants only a drink – but I put food in front of her any way, and she picks at it.
18:30 I start to make “bed time” noises so that eventually S will wander upstairs of her own accord. We change her nappy, put on a vest and a pair of pyjamas. Just lately she also wants to wear a pair of my fluffy socks – which come up over her knees. We read several stories – usually the same ones – and then begin the serious business of song time. Song time has a fairly rigid structure, though changes are sometimes made. S must be holding Ted, her drink, her shopping bag with some books in it, and her large Fireman Sam book that doesn’t fit into the bag. She used to cuddle me, but as the number of things she must be holding has grown, she can’t cuddle me as well as hold all of these things – so she sits cradled in my lap. We sing Rock-a-bye Baby followed by Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, then just lately we start Baa Baa Black Sheep before remembering that actually we now prefer Incy Wincy Spider. Then there are two rounds of Wheels on the Bus (wheels and horn) before she happily drags her baggage into her side of my bed, lays her head on her ladybird pillow and demands, rug! Rug! which means that she wants to be tucked up, snug as a bug in a rug. I kiss S goodnight, before being ordered to kiss Ted, the drink, the Fireman Sam book, and anything poking out the top of the bag. Then we say nuh-nite and I switch the light off and leave the room.
19:10 Bedtime is 7pm, but we never make it on time. When I eventually get back to the living room, I try to tidy up some of the remnants of tea time and play time, then sit back down on the sofa to catch up. I try to make it so that my work is done during the daytime, and my blogging and social media are taken care of in the evenings. Sometimes that happens; sometimes it happens back to front; sometimes I have too much work to fit into one day and my evening is taken up with work.
21:00 I start to think about having an early night
21:35 Definitely need to start packing things up if I’m going to have that early night.
22:30 I head upstairs to bed, hoping that my switching the lamp on won’t wake S. I creep into bed next to her and read a book for ten minutes while I take my vitamins and supplements. Then I check the heater is set to come on in the morning, check my alarm is set, and switch off the light.
This post is part of the #DayInTheLife project, where people write about a typical day in their lives. If you would like to take part (you don’t need to be a blogger!) please fill in the form in this post.
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