Two and a half years ago, when I was still pregnant with Raven, I did a “Day in the Life” post about what a typical weekday looked like for me. At the time, I thought it was almost silly to detail it all out like that, but now I’m so grateful I took the time to do it since my days are drastically different now that I’m no longer teaching, and it’s fun to look back and remember how it once was. Actually, there have been several times in my life when I felt like it was silly to write down the details of my day because it felt like they were unchanging and would forever remain that way, but I made myself record it all down anyway, and it never ceases to amaze me how much life changes from year to year (even when it sometimes feel like it’s forever staying the same).
So now I present a fairly typical weekday in the life of me as a stay-at-home mom of one child (this was all yesterday, by the way):
8:00 a.m. – I woke up (I slept in a little more than usual yesterday–most days I wake up around 7:15 or 7:30), then went to bathroom. (While I’m in the bathroom, Matt is out in the living room reading book after book to Raven and then changing her diaper.)
8:15 a.m. – Make breakfast (cheese and egg sandwiches). Get Raven ready for day (choose outfit, pull part of her hair into a ponytail).
8:30 a.m. – We all sit down for breakfast. Raven insists on being part of the conversation, so if Matt and I have been leaving her out of the talk for too long, she’ll start jabbering over us or repeating random words that we’re saying.
8:45 a.m. – Matt packs his lunch and prepares to leave for work. I clean up breakfast, finish wiping off Raven’s face and hands (she does most of it herself), and get her out of her high chair. Raven throws away her own wipe and leftover food into the garbage and puts her milk away in the fridge.
8:50 a.m. – Matt leaves for work, kissing Raven and me goodbye. He always stops to wave through the window on his way to the car.
9:00 a.m. – I get ready for day while Raven climbs up on her little footstool by me and attempts to get the lotion out (which she then pretends to put on her face).
9:30 a.m. – As I’m putting away my makeup and hair stuff, I realize I’d better go to the bathroom again before we head out for the next couple hours. While I’m heading into the bathroom, Raven decides she wants to sit on her potty, too. A minor poop incident ensues (no, she didn’t poop in the potty), which means I’m changing Raven’s clothes and wiping poop off of several different surfaces and throwing her dirty clothes into the washer minutes before we’re supposed to head out the door. (Note: this is actually a really rare occurrence for us—Raven almost never has poop incidents.)
When it comes time to put Raven’s jacket and shoes on, she pulls her usual trick that she just picked up and hides underneath the kitchen table.
9:55 a.m. – I manage to get Raven in her jacket and get her shoes on (which are too big, but I couldn’t find the other ones I was looking for). I strap Raven in the car and go and pick up my visiting teaching companion.
10:00 a.m. – Go visiting teaching. (For those not of the LDS faith, visiting teaching is where you’re assigned a (female) visiting partner and the two of you are assigned to go visit a few different sisters in your congregation monthly to make sure they’re all doing okay, and to share a short gospel message.) This particular morning, we visited one of the widows in the ward, a woman I’ve long looked up to for her spirituality and stamina (at almost 90, no less). Before the visit, she’d brought out a new toy for Raven to play with, so Raven kept busy with that and a couple books I brought while we women chatted for about an hour.
11:00 a.m. – I drop off my visiting teaching partner at her house, and we go visit Daddy at work (for just a couple minutes—to bring him a treat and say hello). We don’t always go out and visit Matt at work when we’re out and about, but we probably average visiting him at work about once a week. This just happened to be one of those days since Raven kept saying his name in the car, so I figured she thought we were on our way to go see him, and we had the time to oblige her whim. Matt feeds her a squeeze pouch in the backseat before we head out.
11:15 a.m. – Raven and I go grocery shopping at Sam’s Club for fruit, eggs, chicken, etc. Raven LOVES to go grocery shopping because she likes saying hi and waving at anyone who walks by us (which usually elicits a lot of impromptu conversations with strangers about how cute she is). When she doesn’t see anyone within our immediate vicinity, she pulls out the mini flashlight I keep in the side of my purse and plays with that. I manage to only make two impulse purchases while there (a container of hummus and a take ‘n bake pizza, which I plan to make for Valentine’s Day next week because pizza is super romantic and all that). I still manage to stay roughly within my grocery budget for the week (which is around $75/week).
12:00 p.m. – Get home from the store, unload groceries, grab the mail (3 magazines today! hooray!), and feed Raven a quick lunch (grapes, pita with hummus). I put the groceries away while Raven eats.
12:30 p.m. – Raven goes down for a nap, and I eat lunch while going on Duolingo and practicing my French for the day. After, I unload the dishwasher and load all the dirty dishes in.
1:00 p.m. – Someone comes over to buy one of my items listed on KSL. I then go online to check the status of all my eBay and KSL listings (and to mark the one item as sold). I enter information about the sale into our business spreadsheet.
1:15 p.m. – I sit down to write yesterday’s blog post (with a handful of Hershey kisses by my side for good measure).
2:30 p.m. – Raven wakes up. I put on Tangled for 10 minutes so that I can finish up and publish the blog post.
2:45 p.m. – Because enough of the snow has melted from the sidewalks and the temperature is no longer frigid, we go on a long walk outside (our first in over two months, I believe). I push Raven in her stroller for the first 25 minutes, Raven gets out and walks for the next 25 minutes (during which time she insists on pushing the stroller herself, only stopping to gather up any stray leaves on the ground and place them carefully in the bottom basket), and I put her back in the stroller for the last 10 minutes (surprisingly, only minor whining ensues).
3:45 p.m. – We get back home and eat a small snack (cinnamon toast). (Note: it’s actually not normal how many snacks we ate this day–usually we just have 3 solid square meals and that’s it, but since our lunch was small and we were on the go a lot, I supplemented with two snacks.) Raven has a freak-out moment when I try to take off her coat and wants to continue pushing around the huge stroller in our tiny apartment. Spats of crying break out whenever she can’t figure out how to maneuver the stroller around a tight corner or an impossibly narrow space.
4:00 p.m. – I start prepping a future blog post; Raven has (thankfully) given up on pushing around the big stroller and is playing with her other toys.
4:15 p.m. – I tidy up the house a bit—I relocate bins of next-size-up clothes to Raven’s room (rather than in the kitchen, where they’ve been sitting for over a week), recycle junk mail, and put random odds and ends away. Raven thinks we’re playing a game of chase-around-the-house, so cleaning up turns into a game of chase-around-the-house for tickling and cuddles.
4:30 p.m. – I text Matt to see if he’s willing to stop by Smith’s on his way back from work (to pick up a couple items for dinner that Sam’s Club only offers in quantities too vast for normal human consumption). I figure out what to make for dinner (hamburgers to use up the patties that have been in the freezer forever and a caesar salad with homemade dressing). I then sit down with Raven to play with the kitchenette and play food she got for Christmas (which is still her absolute favorite thing to play with, hands down). She finally lets me take off her coat.
4:45 p.m. – I start dinner prep. Raven reads books and pushes her doll’s stroller around (since I managed to relocate her actual stroller that she’d been moving around back to her room).
4:55 p.m. – I text Matt to remind him to stop at the grocery store (because sometimes in his eagerness to get home already, he forgets).
5:05 p.m. – Matt calls from the grocery store (as expected) to ask about which kind of parmesan cheese I want and where the croutons are located. I give him my best guess since I haven’t bought croutons in years. Raven wants to talk to him so I put the phone up to her ear and she excitedly breathes into it, managing a few words at the end (including “bye bye” and “lub you”).
5:15 p.m. – Matt gets home, kisses me and Raven, and sits down to watch Tangled with Raven (which I put on about ten minutes ago when she started crying for me to pick her up while I was mixing the salad dressing together). I start grilling the burgers.
5:35 p.m. – Dinner’s ready, the movie gets turned off, and we are pleasantly surprised at how well Raven handles eating the burger without pulling it apart too much. (She also tries the salad, but the dressing is probably a bit strong for her.) Before we start eating, we have Raven try her hand at saying the prayer to bless it. Adorableness ensues.
6:00 p.m. – Dinner’s over, and cleanup begins. Matt and Raven sing a cleanup song while they put away her toys, and I load all the dishes into the dishwasher and start it through, wipe down the grill, and package away all leftovers for easy access tomorrow.
6:30 p.m. – We get Raven into her pajamas, swaddle her up, give her her “Wubby” (stuffed pink elephant), and I read her two books while Matt gives her fluoride drops and brushes her teeth. (Matt and I switch off every night who gets to read and cuddle with her and who brushes the teeth and gives the drops.)
6:45 p.m. – After lots of kisses and snuggles from both of us, we tell Raven good night (who responds back with, “Night night. Lub you”), and put her down.
6:50 p.m. – I take my first non-rushed potty break all day (which involves reading the massive stack of magazines I’ve got collecting dust in there).
7:00 p.m. – I sit down to work on some family history and genealogy. (Normally at this time, Matt and I will sit down and watch a couple shows together but we just barely finished the Gilmore Girls series and the 4-episode special and haven’t found anything new to watch. For the record, we both rather liked the series, and we both absolutely hated the 4-episode special.) I’ve been working on finding more names of Matt’s ancestors (since it’s been so long since anyone in his family has discovered new people on their side), and I struck gold last night–within an hour, I find 18 new names to connect into the line. Woo hoo!
8:10 p.m. – I take a break from genealogy to get dressed for the gym. I leave the apartment shortly thereafter.
8:30 p.m. – My kickboxing/bags class starts, and it’s just as intense as ever. As usual (in the kicks/legs section), I feel like throwing up and wonder why I put myself through this every week. When class gets over though, I’m on top of the world and singing along with the radio in the car.
9:40 p.m. – I get back from my class and call my mom for about ten minutes to see if she ended up visiting with my mother-in-law today (to bring her food at the hospital), then I chatted with Matt for about ten more.
10:00 p.m. – I hop in the shower.
10:15 p.m. – I finish getting ready for bed.
10:30 p.m. – I read scriptures, then read out of two of the (fiction) books that I’m in the middle of (The Course of Love and Small Great Things). On most nights, I read for about double the time I did last night, but because of my exercise class, I was already getting into bed late, so I cut it a little short.
11:15 p.m. – I go take one last bathroom break, say my prayers, and then it’s lights out!
And there you have it—a fairly typical day in my life right now as the SAHM of one adorable little Raven. I think I need to make this a yearly (or even semi-yearly tradition).
