I'm not a "schedule" kind of gal

I tried over the first four years or so of childrearing to get myself into a schedule. You know, sit down, draw out the blocks of time, and then put assign tasks to each block? Well, I can tell you, I just can't do schedules. To me, a schedule creates an expectation. And then every single day, that expectation isn't met. Because a house full of little ones just doesn't fit neatly into boxes. At least not here in my house.

I've spent a lot of time feeling like that we should be running on a schedule, and since we weren't, it must have meant I just didn't have it together enough to do a schedule. Until the day it dawned upon my mind... I could still have an organized and smoothly running home with a routine.

Now, that routine has morphed over and over again, because we've added a couple babies, moved, started homeschooling... and each time things completely change. While I'm pregnant, life is in survival mode the entire 9 months. But we have a routine, even if it is bare bones. I know if I tried to keep up with a schedule then, I'd be having major expectations of myself that I just can't meet.

Right now our routine looks like this:

• Mommy up (6 am) - dressed/eat, put in a load of laundry, tidy one room somewhere in the house, computer time
• Kids up - eat/dress, make beds
• Bible time (family devotions)
• School for Sunshine and anyone else who feels like joining in.
• Exercise (they play while I exercise, sometimes they join in)
• Lunch, prep for dinner
• Chores (like sweeping the kitchen floor, taking out trash, emtpying dishwasher, reloading it, tidying the kitchen or bedroom, etc)
• Take a walk or do something outside if the weather permits
• Rest time
• Get dinner started (I try to have dinner ready to eat at 5:00, but sometimes I'm late)
• Kids tidy up living room and we all fold laundry (yes, the two older girls really do fold laundry, and they do a great job, too!)
• Half hour of tv while Mommy finishes up dinner
• Eat
• Start getting ready for the next day: laying out clothes, clean up the kitchen one last time, get the kids into pjs, brush teeth and braid Sunshine's hair (lessens tangles)
• Play and read together until bedtime for kids
• Once kids are down, I take the baby to my room and I do my own personal devotions. I try to be in bed by 9:30 these days. Baby still wakes in the middle of the night.

If you noticed, the baby isn't listed for where in the routine she nurses. I just work around her, so the kids get free time while we nurse. Sometimes we all pile on the couch, and I read to them while I nurse her. It all just depends on what I feel like that day. And bath days are a few nights a week, so we do that after dinner on those evenings.