A Day in the Life

I decided to try to document my Saturday by taking a photo every hour... I didn't quite get it exactly, but came pretty close. Here's what Saturday looks like at our house (when David isn't home).

7:11am. Coco is crying. I was up with her at 2am (obviously, because every healthy 15-month-old still wakes up and needs mama-milk in the middle of the night). (Seriously, though, just a few weeks ago, we had a good thing going with sleep. I don't know what happened!)

7:30am. Both girls are awake and we have a little snuggle time in the chair in Coco's room. After a busy week, we're all glad it's a stay-at-home-day. Zuzu wants to get dressed before breakfast. Coco gets a diaper change but stays in jammies.

8:30am. Breakfast! We had barely any food in the house, so they both ate bagels with cream cheese and applesauce. I made a grocery list while they ate and had oatmeal and tea because I am (1) elderly (2) British (3) awesome. {A: (3)}.

Coco is being silly. Cooper is worshipping at the High Chair of Plenty. Zuzu is serious about drinking from her Big Girl Cup.

9:30am. I tried to do a 25 minute yoga workout. You would think I could manage this, but of course the minute I lay down on the yoga mat, both girls were all over me. Once I'd made my way through most of the yoga (there's no point doing savasana when a twenty-pound baby is bouncing on your belly), we called David to Facetime with Gma Peppa. Then I hopped in the shower.

Zuzu reads aloud the farm noises book to Coco and Cooper.

10:30am. It's snowing! And time to go out.

I'm annoyed that this photo is blurry because they looked SO adorable. We got many compliments on their coats. (Both were gifts from Grammy.)

I took a quick picture of the girls in their "dressy cotas" before we left for Zuzu's puppet show. When she was a baby, I signed her up to participate in studies at the psychology department at a loca university, and this was the second time they've called us. This time they had her watch a puppet show with two different sets of hippos. One set would play and interact with her for the whole show. The other set would play and interact with her, then stop part way through without explanation and only play with each other after that. The experiment was to determine whether three-year-olds feel left out.

11:00am. Zuzu watched the puppet show while Coco and I waited in the waiting room. The grad student running the experiment told me most three-year-olds said they liked both sets of hippos the same, and Zuzu was no exception. It was only if the hippos said overtly, "We don't want to play with you any more," before only playing with each other that a three-year-old would have a negative reaction and say they favored the other hippos. I found this fascinating because "I'm not going to play with you anymore! You're not my friend!" is the MAJOR insult at Zuzu's school. Three-year-olds obviously prefer ghosting over confrontation.

11:30am.

Playing with a fancy magna-doodle and warming right up to this dude.

The undergrad helping with the exam who walked us out to our car to collect our parking pass told me that the kid who did the experiment right before Zuzu cried the whole time and it was really awesome how fun she was. She was totally chatty and perfectly willing to go in the other room by herself with complete strangers to watch a puppet show--although she did ask if Coco could come, which I thought was sweet. Coco, on the other hand, clung to me, sat in my lap the entire time, and finally wanted to stand next to me as long as she could keep her hand on my leg.

12:30pm. After a clean-out-the-fridge lunch (quesadillas and pita with hummus plus canned pears and Inner Peas from TJs, which Zuzu calls "French fries), I parked Zuzu in front of Mickey Mouse and took Coco up for nap. Unfortunately, Coco had cat-napped on the way home, so she was happy to nurse and rock on my lap for 45 minutes, but she never dozed off. I called D to see how things were going and he said his grandma seemed to be feeling good today.

I love how she holds her little ear as she nurses.

1:30pm. Since Coco refused to nap, I decided to go ahead and go to Trader Joe's, so at 1:30pm I started rounding things up to get us out of the house. I've had a few (local) friends say that I should let them know if there's anything they can do to help us out since D is out of town, and I was very tempted to send one of them to TJ's with my list, but it really seemed like too much to ask of anyone. And it was.

Zuzu loves TJ's and the chance to wear her rainboots.

2:00pm. Once I got to the parking lot, I remembered why I don't go to Trader Joe's on weekends between Halloween and New Years. The place was a mad house. And of course Coco fell asleep in her car seat on the way there. I felt bad about it, but I dragged her out of the car and into the stores. We started out in World Market, where I bought coffee.

2:30pm. We entered the madness of TJ's. Fortunately, Zuzu was willing to ride in the big basket of the shopping cart. Unfortunately, we needed so much food there was barely room for her. The free sample was a delicious apple tart that we all liked, but there were so many people that I almost had a little freak out when I couldn't get where I needed to go because the check out lines were going back into the aisles, and Coco was started to get screamy. I kept her happy tickling her and playing peek-a-boo with my scarf and Zuzu was pretty good except for one point when she scurried through the line in front of us and acted like she was going to leave the store. I started hollering her name, and the ladies in front of me also called her name, so she actually turned around and paid attention to them. Then I bribed her with "fruit leather"--her favorite treat at TJ's and all was fine.

Cooc was a happy baby (who had kicked off her boots) but the lines were crazy. I think the guy behind her is at the end of his rope.

3:30pm. We got home and I decided that we should go to the park. We needed fresh air and to burn off some energy. I was aiming for early bedtime for the girls and TV-alone-time for me! So I rushed around getting groceries put away and bundling up the girls in layers. Zuzu does not like bulky clothes (or coats), so winter is going to be challenging for us.

Zuzu has mittens on her hands. Coco has... socks on her hands. I couldn't find our smaller mittens and we were in a hurry to get out of the house before it got too dark.

4:30pm. We were racing daylight and it was freeeeeezing at the park! Plus, Coco was tired (No Nap Nancy is not my favorite baby personality), but she really wanted to swing. Cooper enjoyed the freedom to wander since we were the only people crazy enough to hit the playground when the high was in the low 40s. My hot tea got cold fast and we headed for home.

"Push me HIGHER, Mommy!" Poor ragamuffin Coco with her sock-hands. Lol.

5:30pm.

No caption necessary.

The girls were starving when we got home from the park, so by 5:30 they'd already eaten (turkey meatballs from TJs, peas, pears, and raspberries, plus three TJ-brand triscuit crackers for Zuzu). We had a spilled-milk incident, but of all the things that make me crazy, accidental messes are no big deal to me. Zuzu helped clean it up, and then it was time for me really to clean up the kitchen and also treat ma self. (I actually waited to open the wine until bedtime, but I did have three Joe-joes.)

6:30pm.

Cooper needs a bath himself--you can see the marks on his head where Zuzu spilled her milk on top of him.

Bath Time for bozos and Facetime with David again. Zuzu pretended the ducks were her pets and was very particular about them. It's fun to see her imagination get more and more creative and elaborate in her games.

7:00pm. Pajama party. I love their footie pajamas. They like to put on music and dance before bed.

Tuning the radio and turning up the volume.

Dance party!

7:30pm. Coco asleep. WINNING! Zuzu watching Daniel Tiger (I find he is more relaxing than Mickey and easier for her to turn off (Mickey is like a drug she can't get enough of)). Once Coco was snoozing in the crib, Zuzu and I snuggled in my bed and read three books--What's In a Name? (a personalized book that was a baby gift from our friend Gina), Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots (picked it up at a thrift store--the answer is yes, and princesses also do chores and ride bikes, among other things), and some selections from A Treasury for Three-Year-Olds--the story of Thumbelina, The Gingerbread Man, and a few poems.

8:30pm. Zuzu asleep. WINNING! I left her in my bed and headed down to the TV room. I'm eating pizza, opening that bottle of wine, typing this, watching Law and Order SVU, and getting ready to grade a few papers. Adult time is so much fun.