A Day in the Life of… 2014 {link-up}

Welcome to the 4th Annual “A Day in the Life of…” photography project!  The concept is simple, but the results are awesome.  Take one picture every hour, for one day, and an unique hour by hour snapshot of your day is created.

For 4 years, I’ve been taking my pictures on January 18th.  This year the 18th was a Saturday.  It was fun to document a weekend this year.  I hope you enjoy my pictures and I look forward to seeing yours!

A Day in the Life of Rebekah – January 18, 2014

7:00 AM – Noah woke up, but I was able to convince him to go back to sleep for a bit.  We are not early risers in our house.

8:40 AM – Noah woke up again and this time we were ready to stay up.  We are still breastfeeding twice a day – first thing in the morning and right before bed at night.  I’ll be honest.  I hesitated including this little fact in my day for everyone to read.  I know that he is “way too old” in some people’s opinions, but in our house we nurse until about 2 years old.  I’ve struggled in the past with being embarrassed and I’m not going to be ashamed this time around.

9:15 AM – Noah and I are finishing up our morning cuddles and finally headed downstairs at 9:30.  This picture is extremely accurate.  Noah practically lays on top of my head every morning.

I thought that Nate and Grace were downstairs, but the house was empty.  Nate had to go to work for a little bit and he took Grace with him.  This is pretty normal.  Grace enjoys going to “Daddy’s work” on Saturdays.

I made breakfast for Noah and let him help me make coffee.  He is OBSESSED with our coffee maker.

10:15 AM – I’m finally ready to sit down and enjoy my breakfast.  I almost always eat breakfast in this chair.  I sit there so the kids don’t climb all over me while I’m eating, yet it rarely works out that way.

After breakfast Noah and I took a shower.

11:15 AM – The alarm on my phone (to remind me to take my picture each hour) went off right as I was stepping out of the shower.  We got dressed and then went back downstairs.

I tried to play with Noah and enjoy this alone time while his sister wasn’t around, but it didn’t last long.  He was in a mood where he was making a mess out of everything!  He is a thousand times more interested in my things (coffee maker, hair dryer, kitchen cabinets) than he is in any of his toys.

12:15 PM – I started making lunch and attempted to empty the dishwasher while Noah continuously cried at my feet.  I should have stopped putting dishes away and found something else to distract Noah with, but I was feeling stubborn.  Every. single. day. he is destroying my kitchen and demanding to play with all of the appliances.  It isn’t safe or convenient.  I was mad.

Thankfully, Nate and Grace came home.  I dished up everyone’s lunch (spaghetti) and escaped to my bedroom.  I browsed Facebook and chatted with some blogging buddies online.  I needed that break.

1:15 PM – I was walking down the stairs after laying Noah down for his nap.  I was still in an awful mood and was completely forcing my fake smile.  Praise the Lord for nap time!

I decided I wanted to conquer our toy mess and try using a toy rotation system.  Nate tucked Grace in for her nap while I gathered all my toy rotation supplies.  Just my luck, I forgot to get the empty bins out of the office.  I had to walk through Noah’s room to get to the office.  It was a risky move, but I went in while he was sleeping and managed to get out everything I needed without waking him up.

2:15 PM – This was the chaos just before I started sorting everything.  Nate picked up the rest of the house while I organized the toy rotation system.

3:15 PM – Things were getting closer to something that resembled organization instead of a toy hurricane.  The bins were almost completely filled.

Nate mopped the kitchen while I continued working on the toy rotation.  When everything was packed up, Nate put the bins in the basement and I reorganized the few toys we kept out.

4:15 PM – The living room was back to normal and I took a break to sit on the couch with the kids while they watched a Barney DVD.  I jotted down some notes about my day for this post and vacuumed the living room.

5:15 PM – We decided to go out to eat for supper and headed to Applebee’s.  Since it was a Saturday night, the place was swamped.  That was poor planning on our part.  We waited for 30 minutes.

While we waited, an elderly woman commented sweetly on Noah’s thumb sucking.  She said all of her children had been thumb suckers.  I asked her how they eventually broke them of the habit.  Without skipping a beat (or smiling) her husband chimed in, “Cut their thumbs off.”  Oh my! I had a good laugh about that one.

6:15 PM – I was so hungry by the time we sat down.  I was too hungry to talk.  I even apologized to Nate for my bad mood.

I ordered a cowboy burger and only ate half of it.  I purposely saved half my fries so I could have it for lunch the next day.  Then as we were leaving the restaurant, I knocked the take-out box out of Nate’s hand, it fell on the floor, opened up, and spilled everywhere.  I was soooo close to shoving all that food back into the box and taking it home anyway.  It was a burger and fries.  It’s not like I spilled spaghetti on the floor.  However, the table next to us and our waitress witnessed the whole scene, added in their own dramatic gasps, and watched to see my reaction.

I picked up my food and left it on our table.  Then I climbed into our car and cried.  *sigh*  I was so frustrated.  Yes, it was overly dramatic, but it wasn’t just about the wasted food.  It was also about my fussy toddler, the naptime that was filled with a task instead of any downtime, the long wait for our table…  It wasn’t my best moment.

7:15 PM – I ate chocolate.  I needed chocolate.  Apparently, Noah thought he needed some too.

Nate gave Grace a bath and I played with Noah.  Then I dried Grace’s hair with the hair dryer.  Of course little Noah wanted a turn too.

8:15 PM – This picture is from me sitting in Noah’s room nursing him before bed.  Then I tucked Grace into bed and we share our “rose & thorn” of the day.  My thorn was dropping my food at the restaurant.

I came downstairs.  Nate and I had our nightly 10  minute date.  This time is it ended up  lasting 30 minutes.  After our date I got out my laptop.

9:15 PM – The rest of the night went by quickly.  I do all of my blog work and professional Pinterest work while the kids are napping or sleeping at night.  This night I started out doing some Pinterest work.

10:15 PM – I chatted with blogging buddies on Facebook.

11:15 PM – I wrote the post Curing Thrush with Gentian Violet.

12:15 AM – I tried to pretend that I wasn’t awake this late by skipping a picture of the dark house, but I was awake.  I didn’t fall asleep until after 12:30.  I am constantly going to bed too late.  No wonder I wanted Noah to go back to sleep when he woke up at 7:00 AM!

Now it is your turn to share your day!  Use the link-up to add a link to a post on your own blog.  If you are reading this in your email or RSS reader, you’ll need to click over to Simply Rebekah to add your link and/or see the posts that other bloggers have shared. For more details about the Annual “A Day in the Life of…” Link-Up click here.