Schedule

I feel incredibly guilty. Should I really be blogging in the middle of the afternoon? Camille and the twins are napping, Nathan's resting (after some half-hearted protests), and I have half an hour. I contemplate my options. Fold laundry? Work on our summer homeschooling schedule? (And poor Nathan. I've been building up all the schoolwork I plan to have them do this summer. He asked me a couple of days ago,"Will there by any time to play this summer, Mom?") I'm bagging dinner prep and ditching the housework in favor of a little time to write.

It's day four of our new "schedule." Always some new hair-brained scheme going on at the Michel household, some surefire strategy for whipping someone into shape. A couple of months ago, it was the day I declared, "No more binkies!" I hadn't been confident that the twins were eating well, or for that matter, sleeping well (without my constant rescue of the fallen binky). The pacifiers disappeared, and everyone was on strict orders not to give the babies their binkies. We had a lot of crying those first few days. But I gotta tell you. It worked. They started nursing better, they learned to put themselves to sleep (and back to sleep), and I wasn't running myself ragged up and down our flour flights of stairs.

Ah yes, back to the new schedule. I start the day by waking the babies up at 6 a.m. (OK, who am I kidding? They're already up.) Early birds, like the rest of us. I feed them, and by 7, they're ready for another quick snooze. It's time to get everyone else up (rephrase that -  Audrey up. Nathan and Camille have already found me hiding in my room). A quick shower and breakfast and Bible reading with the big kids. 8 a.m., I wake the babes, and we walk Audrey to school. Home again, babes eat, and at 9:30, it's time for the morning nap (not me, the babes). Camille and Nathan play while I catch up on some paperwork and phone calls. 11ish, babes are up, they eat, big kids eat, and we all play and read books before nap at 1. Today, Camille went down for her nap (after "Big Sister for Frances"), and I had some time for Nathan to read to me. "Flap Your  Wings" - a great little story about Mr. and Mrs. Bird who hatch an alligator egg in their nest. You know it's good when Nathan says,"I think we'd better finish this one!" That brings me to 2:30, time to wake the babes, feed them, change diapers and rally the troops to get Audrey from school. My biggest decision to make in the next half an hour - do we attempt the library, all SIX of us, after we pick  Audrey up from school?

Stay tuned.