How does everyone else handle their routines and errands? I feel like to maintain her routine we should save all our errands for the end of the day.
Parker’s daily routine looks like this:
6:40-Wake up and eat, hang out and play
9:00-Bottle and nap
10:30-11:00-wake up and have cereal
11:00-1:00-watch show, play, go on walk
1:00-2:00-Eat bottle and solids
2:00-nap
3:30-4:00-wake up and have bottle
4:00-5:30-play, family time, etc.
5:45-solids
6:00-6:30-bath and bedtime routine
7:15-bedtime
~Obviously the evening routine time changes around if errands are included.
The problem is that if her afternoon nap runs late then it makes it difficult to run errands and still fit in all her feedings, her bath (if it’s bath night) and her bedtime routine. I feel like I end up rushing to do my errands to get back in time.
A good example would be the other night when her nap ran late due to her waking up late in the morning and pushing out some of her time tables for the day. All I wanted to do was run to Barnes and Noble to purchase a book (which of course they ended up not having) …our Barnes and Noble is about 10-15 minutes away without traffic and of course this was during that time. Well of course, we ended up getting home late and were rushing to try to get everything done. She still had FaceTime to do with my in-laws, dinner, a bath and her bedtime routine. Safe to say she ended up in bed almost 45 minutes late!
We have tried to do errands in-between her first and second naps because she does stay awake 3 hours in that time. The problem is it needs to be a short errand because she still has 2 solid feedings and a bottle to get through. I also like for her to have some play time in there to get her energy out. In general, this creates the need for the errand to be quite short. The issue with it extending longer than the 3-hour time frame is that she then tends to fall asleep in the car. Now you would think this shouldn’t be a problem but once we get home and she has a bottle, it is next to impossible to get her to fall back asleep in her crib for a full nap. We learned that the hard way a few times and she ended up not napping.
Now that she has her routine, she is a baby who loves her routine! The one time I definitely do an earlier errand is on the days when the weather does not permit a walk. I like to kill the time and, I like to take our dogs since it means they are missing out on their “fun” time.
I am HUGE on running an errand in the afternoon on the days that my husband is out of town. I do feel like she gets, I hate to say bored, but I do feel like at times she runs out of things to do. It becomes the same play time, unless I try to add in an activity but she is still pretty young for most activities. When my husband is home, her evening play time is something different because it is with a different person. So not only do I feel like it kills some time but it also just gets us out of the house and doing something different. So, when he is gone, we do run errands daily. I try to space them out so we aren’t gone for long. If I have 4 errands to run that week, I do only one a day. This means we aren’t out for too long and still have time (most days) to get all her evening routine things in. If I have nothing to do, I WILL come up with something. I will either go to Starbucks, the grocery store, or I will decide that is the night I don’t feel like cooking and I’ll go pick something up to eat for after she goes down.
I’ve just really realized that it gets difficult to fit things in during the day. I’m getting frustrated at times because I want to be able to plan things; the park, the zoo, etc. I want to do fun things with her but I’m so scared of disrupting her schedule. We are going back to California to visit next month and I want to be able to do things with Parker. My mom wants to go to San Francisco and I’d like to go to the zoo, but I’m nervous she’ll miss naps and get cranky. It’s especially daunting when we are going back home to visit since it is already a different time zone and we are already adjusting her schedule. The last time we went there, this kid refused to sleep in her pack n play. She regressed so far where sleeping was concerned, and it’s weird because we didn’t have an issue any of the other times we visited during the holidays. I’m trying to justify it to myself, we aren’t there very often and we are visiting family. I want everyone to have fun with her and for her to get out of the house. Also, to be honest, she is 9 months and she should be able to go out and do stuff. If she must nap while we’re out or she happens to miss a nap, it should be okay. I’m the one who is nervous about the whole thing. We finally got her on a schedule that works and that keeps her happy. The few days she has missed afternoon naps, it’s like she fights taking it the next day.
So, if anyone has any comments or advice about what they do with their kids and how they balance activities/errands with their routine, please let me know!
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