The Kids

Today marks the first day of my new career as a stay-at-home-day. There have been sporadic posts to this Kids blog, but I'm hoping to now keep a regular cadence of posts now that I'll be home. I must say that I was a bit apprehensive about today and kept wondering if I was going to be able to pull this off. I was most worried that I would just be falling asleep on the kids as neither Mom nor I have gotten much sleep in the last few weeks/months/years.

Day 1

The day officially started at 9:30 when Mom left for work. We saw her off from the window, then had a late breakfast. Afterwards we made a blanket fort in the living room out of the couch cussions, played nights & dragons, made some noise with our intruments and read some books. In just an hour and a half the living had gone from clean to this:

The mess by 11:00 (Click for panorama)

Not to worry though, I'm a neat freak so it was clean soon after. I took Raya upstairs for her morning nap just afterwards, and by the time I came back down Maelin had gotten out some watercolor paints and a coloring book and was entertaining herself with them at the Kitchen table. We did some more crafts for a while, then she played in the living room with her dolls while I cooked lunch. Raya woke up just as lunch was ready so she got to eat with us. We went downstairs and played in our cellar after lunch. It quickly became obvious that Maelin needed a nap as she was starting to have melt-downs over little things. I had to practically drag her up to her bedroom where she reluctantly got into bed, but it was only a matter of minutes before she was sleeping. I tried to get Raya down for another nap, figuring it would be great to have an hour or so to myself in the afternoon, but it was not to be - I think I dozed off for a few minutes but Raya was just not having it. So we got up and played by ourselves for a while. I figured she'd be ready for an early bed time since she didn;t nap, so I started an early supper. Maelin woke up a little while later and we read and sang some songs as I finished cooking dinner. They both chowed down (Tofu and Pineapple in terriaki sauce, with a side of spelt with dried cranberries and cherries) and were rewarded with "Scooby Snacks" as Maelin calls them, really sherbert pops with Scooby Doo on them.  Then it was bath time, brushing teeth, and a story while we waited for Mom to get home.

So, pretty easy really. I've had longer days at work (8-hour meetings be damned!) and we had a really good time listening to Christmas tunes on the radio and singing along. I have a Dr.'s appointment tomorrow morning, so we'll be up and out of the house pretty early. I hope it's not as icy as it was today.