Changes

One of the things I spent some time doing on my Planning Day was to identify some ongoing things about my day (every day) that, well, for lack of a better way to put it, basically just sucked. In other words, what were some things that EVERY SINGLE DAY were either stressing me out, annoying me, annoying Gunnar, annoying Nason, making our day run less than smooth, etc. Here's what I came up with:

- Trying to rush out the door every morning to get somewhere
- Messiness around the house
- Not enough quality play time with Gunnar
- Attempting to get cleaned up and ready in the mornings, while at the same time entertaining and/or keeping Gunnar out of trouble
- Feeling like I didn't have enough down time
- Dinner time. Everything about it. Period.

So, here are the six, oh-so-simple changes I put into place, that LITERALLY have been life changing so far. I have NO idea why it took me this long to do them:

1) Wake up before Gunnar: Every morning this week, I woke up early enough to shower and get ready, AND do a quick straightening-up of the house, before Gunnar wakes up. Added bonus besides the obvious? I get a full cup of coffee in my system before I greet Gunnar for the day, AND I get to watch snippets of my beloved Today show, which I used to ALWAYS watch, while getting ready for work (in the pre-Gunnar days), and seriously missed.

2) 3 times a day, I do a brief "straightening up" of the house. Once before Gunnar wakes up, once right after I lay him down for his nap, and once right after we put him to bed for the night. This ensures that the house never gets TOO messy, BUT (and more importantly) it ensures that I'm not wasting quality time that I could be spending with him, cleaning the house (which I was SUPER guilty of before)

3) I sit down and eat breakfast with Gunnar (helping to achieve my goal of my quality, face-time with him)

4) With rare exceptions, we do NOT leave the house before 10 am anymore. This is HUGE. One of the biggest sources of annoyance, leading to me being unnecessarily short with Gunnar, was that every single day, I was rushing us to eat breakfast, get ready, and get out the door. To go SOMEWHERE. Anywhere. I like to be on the go a lot, whether it's errands, playdates, etc. This hasn't changed, and probably won't, but by committing to not leaving before 10, it ensures that Gunnar and I get to have a nice, leisurely morning together, void of unnecessary rushing and impatience. Also, since I'm already ready, and the house is already reasonably clean, we can spend the whole morning up until then playing (which addresses one of the other problems mentioned above).

5) Gunnar stays in his bed until 7:15 in the morning, and stays in his bed for 2 hours and 15 minutes at nap time. It matters not if he wakes up prior to that. He can read books, or just hang out in his room, but that door ain't opening until the time I set. That ensures that I have time to get ready and do my cleaning in the morning, AND it ensures that I have SOME (even if it's small) amount of free time, to do absolutely nothing, during his afternoon nap.

6) I'm doing dinner prep during his nap. Dinner time at our house has become SO miserable lately. Especially with this new vegan way of eating. It seems to take FOREVER to cook, eat, and then clean up the millions of dishes involved with whatever recipe I've made, and Gunnar seems to take advantage of this time where I'm otherwise occupied, to be at his very most disobedient/disorderly. So, I'm doing as much of the dinner preparation as is feasibly possible while he's asleep, cutting down DRASTICALLY on how much time I'm in the kitchen in the evening.

This week has gone SO smoothly as a result, and I just can't believe that it's taken me so long to begin doing most of these things.