How do you start your day? What is it that makes you roll out of bed to do something? Is it only the promise of a paycheck and a fear of being late? Does the motivation evaporate when you stay home for a week on vacation?
When you stay home, it’s important to establish routines. How you start your morning puts the entire day into perspective. If you get interrupted, it can throw off everything. Getting back on track is nearly impossible, and I find it difficult to pinpoint why. Just that my routine was messed up.
Before I had a baby, messing up my routine wasn’t nearly problematic as it is now. If I slept in an extra hour, I would just start everything later. My routine at the time included yoga, shower and other personal hygiene activities, and breakfast – in that order.
Now there’s no sleeping in at all unless the little girl agrees to it. While it does help keep a schedule, some days it’s difficult to drag myself out of bed to get her. Then there’s still yoga, whether she’s trying to sit on my head or not. She gets breakfast before that – and again before I get mine. It just takes me forever to warm up to the idea of food in the morning, and I know if I eat before yoga- there will be no yoga.
That doesn’t seem like a huge deal. So I didn’t stretch this morning? What’s the problem? The problem is, once I get accustomed to having physical activity, I miss it. I want to continue. My body complains with little aches here and there. It’s similar to what happens if you stop eating breakfast when you’re accustomed to it.
A year ago it was difficult to find time to shower, with the newborn who needed such time. I remember my brother-in-law telling my sister-in-law that showering was not a personal accomplishment. At the time, she had a newborn and a two-year-old in the house. Figuring out where to keep the two of them that no harm would come to both and leaving them alone to shower seems like a huge accomplishment to me. At that time, I was still having trouble figuring out where to put my one newborn so I could have ten minutes to shower.
I’ve heard you learn more about parenting as your kids age. Definitely true. The more years you put in, the more you figure out. Somehow everything that needs to get done is accomplished.
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