Our routine these days is starting earlier than it had been in a while; Maia's been waking up before 7:00 AM most days, which means that I have to make my way out of bed quite early in the morning to have my treasured quiet time before she wakes up. Some mornings I do it, some I don't. By 7:00, though, Maia's out of her PJs, I'm dressed, and we're downstairs making cereal or toast for breakfast.
Rachel and Maeve, our friends' two girls and my current day care charges, arrive at about 9:30 each morning. Before that, Maia and I sometimes go to a coffee shop for breakfast and to watch people walking around Ann Arbor as they start their mornings. Our favorite people-watching location is the Espresso Royale on State St., which has a great view of one of the main corners of U of M's campus. Maia gets a kick out of talking about college, and how she's going to go to college one day. She is very clear, however, that I'm going to be attending with her. :) She understands that "campus" is different from the rest of downtown, mainly because she can run on the grass, she doesn't have to worry about cars and streets, AND campus is where her beloved dinosaur museum is.
Maia had been going through a bit of a bumpy patch in some of October and November; she was having more tantrums than normal, and just seemed generally dissatisfied with the world on more days than was her habit before. Transitions from one activity to another were particularly challenging, and we saw a lot more tears than usual during these times. My suspicion is that she was trying to figure out what types of methods of persuasion were going to be successful--essentially, she seemed to be asking "Will this work to get what I want?" Whining, yelling, flopping down to the floor: we saw all of the above. The last couple of weeks, though, have been immensely smoother, and she's back to her usual self again. She seems to have more of an awareness, though, of her tone of voice and the strategies she's using to navigate her world; she easily snaps out of the whining tone with a quiet reminder from Brian or me along the lines of "We can talk about that after you're done using your whining voice."
She still naps every day for about two hours, usually 12-2 or 1-3, depending somewhat on what we do for lunch. Today, for example, we'll be meeting Brian for lunch, and so she probably won't get to sleep until 1:00. I feel so grateful that her naptime is still pretty much a given, every day; this block of time is often when I get stuff done for my evening work obligations, or get my shower done if I didn't get up early enough to do it before Maia woke up in the morning.
Afternoons after nap are our time to run errands or do something fun, like go to the aforementioned dinosaur museum. Brian's usually home from work at about 4:30, at which point we squeeze in dinner before my classes or doula meetings or whatever I might have on a particular night. This week, we only had Wednesday night together; I had/have work obligations on Monday, Thursday, tonight (Friday), Saturday and Sunday, and Brian had a meeting to attend on Tuesday. Not all of our weeks are so filled-up in the evenings, but there's almost always something to think about in terms of scheduling. Next week Brian will be traveling to Seattle for several days, which is a whole different challenge from the more routine "tag-team" parenting that it sometimes feels we're doing.
Life is full, and good, and we're all trying to enjoy these last few days of autumn-like weather before the snow begins to fall.
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