Megan walks through a day managing two young kids, pregnancy, and the challenge of short naps at daycare. She shares her actual routine and how she handles the exhaustion that comes with it all.
If you could be a fly on the wall and watch how other parents do it, wouldn't that be great? That's why a day in the life was created. I don't want you to use these as a way to compare yourself to other parents, but I hope you can see is like, oh, okay. They do it a little differently than I do. Oh, their baby melts down. Oh, they're baby fought naps. Oh, that looks really interesting. That's what I want for you. So I have another life for you today, and I think you're gonna love it.
Y', all, my name is Megan. I have two little ones. Jack is four and my little girl Landon is 18 months. And I'm pregnant with baby girl number two. She'll be here in February. I'm gonna show you a little bit about how our days go. I'm gonna start with a few things that I do in the evening to make our morning chaos run a little smoother. When all we do pre K and daycare drop offs in the mornings before I head back home to work. Okay. So for Landon, I like to at least get out her outfit, including her socks and shoes, so that if dad's helping in the morning, he knows exactly what to put on her. Jack wears uniforms, so that's super easy. So today, Landon did not have preschool. She was at home. So she got about a three hour nap from 12:30 to 3:30. About a four and a half hour awake window works best for her. And that's really it. She'll be down for the night. Ready? Good morning. I am about to make myself a cup of coffee and then spend a few minutes getting myself ready before the kids get up for the day. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Breakfast, Watching cartoons? Are you brushing your teeth? Are you ready for school? All right, we're loaded up. Headed to pre K for this big kid. Headed to daycare for that one. Okay, we got bubs dropped off. Now it's my turn. Are you excited? You got your bow? Okay, I'm back home. I'm gonna do a super quick cleanup of the kitchen, set my workspace up, and then I'll get my work day started. All right, hair up after that one. I know that many of you can relate and feel the pain of this pregnancy. Morning sickness that hits you out of nowhere and seems like it lasts all day. I'm a little over halfway through my pregnancy now, so it is better, but I still have days where I struggle and it's rough and I know so many moms have pregnancies that are so, so much tougher than mine ever were. And my heart really goes out to you because it's tough. It's tough to feel bad and work and take care of your other kids. But one thing that really kept me going when I physically and mentally just felt like crap was knowing that, okay, when it comes bedtime, my kids are gonna sleep. Just something so simple as knowing dad or someone else could step in and and do the bedtime routine made a huge difference for me mentally. I didn't have to feel like, oh my gosh, no one else can do this. I'm the only one that can soothe her at bedtime or soothe her during the night. No, those healthy sleep habits are there. Her routine is established and she's a great little sleeper and so someone else can step in and fill in that role. Okay. I packed my diaper bag last night with some snacks for carpool. I have about a 40 minute gap between when I pick up Landon from preschool and when we go get Jack from pre K. So I don't know if your kids are like mine, but they have a button on their honey that when they sit in that car seat, they need a snack immediately, no matter what time it is. So I make sure I'm prepared. Alrighty, These two are going to have a little bit of moana and tablet time. Wow. Mommy finishes up a little bit of work today. Deke, Nana, you said it. Is it my turn to throw it? Good boy, Good boy. Come here, sis. It's okay. Okay, I want to make a little side note about our naps and daycare because I know a lot of mamas are in the same position or will be shortly. We started back about two months ago and so struggled with really short naps in the beginning, like a lot of you, she was taking great naps at home two to three hours, but in her crib, down machine on really dark room, no other kids. And now all of a sudden she's in a room of 11 toddlers sleeping on a nap nap. I thought, this isn't gonna work. Like good luck to her teachers. She's never gonna sleep. And truthfully, she took like 30 to 40 minute max naps for several weeks. But over time she really got used to it and now we're back to getting consistently about two hour naps every day at daycare, which is great. When we were having those really short naps though, a couple things I did. Some days if she just really didn't nap at all or her nap like 20 or 30 minutes I would let her get a little cat nap in the car on the way home. Times what this looked like was just bringing her passy and blankie a little clip on sound machine to her car seat and she napped you know a little 20 to 30 minute nap between pickup and picking up her from pre K and this is a good option I feel like for younger babies and on days that naps just really don't happen. Beyond that we would just bring bedtime up as early as 6:00pm p.m. and this really helped her from being just falling apart over tired. Even with that some of our evenings were really rough and they still are sometimes but we adjust and we make it work and it hasn't prevented us from having really great 11 to 12 hour naps. All of that just to say stay consistent, hang in there. This transition just takes a little bit of time but it really does get so much better. Better Sam not Jack.
