Our Daily Routine
Sophie is 4 and a half months old, and I am so in love with our little life we’ve built — by now, I can read her needs really well, she knows her mama really well, and together we giggle and play and learn during the day…and wait for Daddy to come home so we can continue the fun and the snuggles with him!
Remember how in past posts, I kept saying I was looking forward to getting into a routine? Well, I can now say we have one! (Hooray!) Sophie and I have settled into a nice daily rhythm, which is a comfort to me. I’m a sucker for predictability. 😉
I’ve been thinking of writing this post for a while now…but I was hesitant to get it down on paper for fear that it would change again and then it wouldn’t be accurate. Ha! That’s true. But I’ve come to realize that change is the name of the game in parenthood. Routines do frequently adjust, and we are often tweaking our “strategies” because as Sophie grows, any perfect solution is suddenly a moving target! What worked for all of us yesterday may not work for us today! And that’s okay.
But I’d say that this past month or so has felt like the longest stretch of predictable routine for us. So, today I’m sharing with you what our schedule currently looks like – not that it always has looked like this, or always will – but it’s a snapshot of our current season, frozen in time. This is our life right now, in all its messy, glorious beauty.
Our Daily Routine:
** Sophie is still exclusively nursing at this point. We’ll start introducing foods eventually, when she is bigger. 🙂 Also, it honestly feels funny to me to start recording our daily routine at 7:00 am…because, truly, all my days and nights swirl around into one large ongoing schedule! I almost consider going to bed as the start of the next day, haha. But, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll start with the morning time slot like normal people. 😉 Sophie loves her cuddle time and her independent play time, and she’ll let you know which one she’d like! So, you’ll see a combo of playtimes with and without me throughout the day.
7:00-8:30 am
Sophie wakes up, eats, and we get up for the day.
(Bjorn leaves for work around 7:15 every morning, so we don’t usually get up with him. As much as I’d love to spend more time with him in the early morning, I’m usually trying to snag a final hour or two of sleep when he wakes up.)
After I feed Sophie (and we cuddle a bit!), she and I head downstairs, turn on our Peaceful Midmorning Playlist and she plays on her play mat while I eat breakfast next to her. I start a load of laundry if need be, and then take a quick shower and get ready while Sophie plays with her toys.
9:00 or 10:00 am
Sophie goes down for her midmorning nap.
I still swaddle her for her daytime naps. We rock in the glider in her room, and I turn on the sound machine, give her her pacifier and sing to her. When she’s almost asleep, I lay her in her crib. She often just spits out her pacifier, turns her head, and falls asleep right away!
This is her longest nap of the day (about 2 hours)…so I decide what major task it is I need to get done that day, and try to accomplish it during this midmorning naptime. Right away when she goes down for her nap, I pump while I watch a show. We always want to have some milk saved in the freezer stash for date nights and such. Then, I have a second breakfast 🙂 and work on blogging tasks OR cleaning tasks, depending on what is priority that day.
Around 11:00-12:00
Depending on when she fell asleep, this is when Sophie wakes up.
She relies on being swaddled for comfort during naptimes…but then she tends to wake up, escape her swaddle so her arms are free, and then play and talk happily until she decides she’s awake enough to be hungry!
I feed her and we snuggle and play a bit, then I set her down on her blanket for tummy time or her play mat with toys, and quickly get my lunch heated up. (I usually have leftovers.) Sometimes I’m able to fit my lunch in while she is still asleep for her midmorning nap, but not often. I eat lunch at the dining table and wrap up any blogging tasks I was working on while she plays happily nearby!
1:00 or 1:30
Sophie has her early afternoon nap.
The naps from here till bedtime are usually shorter – less than an hour.
When Sophie wakes up from this nap, I feed her and then she’s really ready to play! During afternoon playtime, she and I play with her toys together, snuggle on the couch, do tummy time, watch the fish in our fish tank, etc. 🙂 This is when we went on a walk the other day when it hit 41 degrees! It’ll be fun to go on more outdoor outings as the weather warms in the coming months.
~3:30 pm
Sophie goes down for her mid-afternoon nap.
I often pick up around the house during this nap, and start to prep for supper if possible.
4:30 pm
Sophie wakes up and eats.
Bjorn may be home by this time, but he often has meetings or he goes running after school. In the fall, he’s gone longer because of cross-country practice.
I begin to make supper after feeding Sophie. She often plays near me, but I also like to wear her in the Baby K’Tan as I chop veggies. 🙂 If Bjorn is home, then the two of them play and cuddle as I make supper.
5:00 or 6:00 pm
Suppertime (for the adults!).
Even though we start out with Sophie playing near us as we eat at the dining table, she often ends up on one of our laps as we finish up our meal. 🙂 Sophie is pretty alert during this time, eager to tell her daddy all about her day with her cute baby sounds, or giggling as she plays with toys.
7:00 or 8:00 pm
Sophie goes down for her evening nap.
This is technically her bedtime. She goes down for bed in her crib for this part of the night. Her dark room and sound machine on remind her that it’s just like nighttime! Sophie is usually in a pretty deep sleep for this nap.
Bjorn and I get time together during her evening nap, which we really enjoy. We often watch a show together on the couch, work on our laptops at the dining table (I do Rodan + Fields or blogging while he works on emails or commander responsibilities), or we’ll sit at the kitchen table and drink tea while we chat.
Bjorn often works on his master’s homework as well, and I always head off to the kitchen to do all the dishes and do any prep like making overnight oats while Sophie is asleep.
Before long, we get ready for bed and head upstairs to read and relax – usually by 9:30 pm.
9:50 or 10:00 pm
I bring Sophie to our room.
She still sleeps in our room with us at night, so at around 10 pm I get Sophie from her crib in her room. I do have to wake her up in order to feed her this final time before bed; I wake her because I am protecting the schedule and structure of bedtime. Bjorn or I like to read her a couple stories and cuddle before she has her final snack before bedtime! Bjorn is often asleep by the time I feed her, and I read a book as I nurse her.
10:30 or 11:00 pm
Lights out!
I burp Sophie and rock her a little, pray over her, turn on her sound machine, and lay her in her bassinet. She doesn’t use her pacifier at this time of night. She’ll fall asleep almost immediately! …And so will I. 🙂
3:00 or 4:00 am
Sophie’s awake and hungry!
She often has 1 or 2 other times during the night when she stirs, and I can usually give her her pacifier and she’ll usually fall back asleep. But if her first time waking is at 3 or 4 am, then I know she’s hungry! I feed her and burp her in the dark if possible, to keep things calm and peaceful so we can get back to sleep soon. Then we try to sleep till daylight.
And, we’re back to the beginning of the day again!
That’s what a typical day looks like around here! If you’re a lover of schedules like me, then I hope you found it interesting! It helps me so much to have a basic structure I can plan our day around.
In case you were curious, I don’t follow an exact sleep schedule or plan. I have read multiple books on babies and sleep, though, which I can recommend to you if you’re interested. Essentially, I try hard to read Sophie’s cues and needs well, while still structuring a fairly normal-feeling day for Bjorn and me. The books I’ve read have mostly affirmed what I’m already doing, which is encouraging! Basically, I work to balance our daughter’s needs with a picture of what we’d like our family schedule to be.
What kind of schedule do you have for your kids? I’m curious!