Just a day, just an...ordinary day
- Charlotte Martin
- Feb 27
- 7 min read
I'll try to capture an "ordinary" day in the life at least once a quarter, maybe once a month. Things change so much with babies, I want to make sure I'm capturing it all! Today is Clementine's 6 month birthday. I hardly remember when Silas was 6 months - what are routines were, what he was eating, etc. So I'm going to make sure I try and document both kiddos going forward.
Clementine had her checkup yesterday and has leapt up in height since her 4 month check up! No wonder she's been busting out of 6 month clothes...on to 9 month clothes from here on out! Also the head...girl's got a big brain (I hope).
Back to the "ordinary" day update...
We start our days around 6:50am, when Silas's Hatch light turns green. That's his signal that he can get out of his big boy bed and come into our room. It's been about 8 months in training but he's finally adhering to the green light rule. And just in the last month, he's started going potty on his own without waking us up. We realized his issue was he could never get his pajama pants back on by himself (and kept waking us up at 3am), so we told him to just grab a pair of shorts from his dresser instead. Every morning he has on a pair of shorts...and a dry pull up. #win
Earlier in January, I actually went as far as to create a sticker chart to reward which of my kids was the better sleeper the night before. I'm certain they will talk about this with their (AI?) therapist some day, but the whole idea was to get Silas to stay in bed until his light turned green and hey...it worked. Clementine started out strong, but the 4 month regression hit her pretty hard and we are only now just stabilizing her sleep at 6 months. Brennan and I would pat ourselves on the back for "training" Silas to be such a good sleeper (shout out Taking Cara Babies AND 12x12)...and then we had Clementine. We thought we were doing the same things we did with Silas, maybe we were, maybe we missed a few critical steps...regardless, if she had been my firstborn, she might have been an only child. And of course, just as we've gotten her into a good sleep rhythm, we are going to destroy it by traveling and naps on the go for the next month. But for some reason, I think I'll just need less sleep in Europe to function than I would at home. Both kids got stickers last night - so we're just taking it day by day.
Clementine usually starts making noise around the time Silas gets up. One parent gets her up and fed, the other parent starts breakfast for Silas. That kid has eaten an egg for breakfast nearly every day since he could eat eggs at 7 months old. He pretty much likes them all ways, but lately we've been scrambling them. The little king gets an egg, sausage or bacon, fruit and sometimes toast every morning. We also just recently got smart and started filling up Silas's milk cup and putting it in the fridge where he can reach it without us...game changer! One of us will pack his school lunch - we love using this stainless bento box. That's one of the reasons we actually love his "school" is they require lunch be brought from home - that way we can control the amount of processed foods he's getting. Alas, my crunchy tendencies as a mom will be a post for another day. He has to wear a uniform to school every day, which I also love because then his good clothes don't get ruined or stained, and he gets dropped off at 9am sharp. He goes to the Spanish Schoolhouse and we all love it. It's truly the cleanest "daycare" I've ever visited (it actually has private pre-k and kindergarten too, so we call it "school"), the teachers are so warm and caring and feels like the whole school knows "See-las". Lately, he's been doing arts and crafts at home and writing his name and other letters unprompted - he's clearly learning a ton at school because we aren't really teaching him that at home. Spanish Schoolhouse is a Spanish immersion school, so they speak Spanish the majority of the time, with a 30 minute English class daily. Silas knows all of his colors, shapes and numbers to 20 in Spanish. He sings multiple songs in Spanish at home every day and the teachers tell us he understands everything they tell him in class, but he always responds in English. Regardless, I'm so proud of his adaptability in an environment that is mostly foreign to him.
Clementine is still doing about 3 naps a day and they are finally starting to consolidate to longer than 35 minutes. Basically since she was 4 weeks old, her naps went to 30-40 minutes and only just started extending. What can I say...the girl gets FOMO (not sure where she gets that from). We usually take her on multiple walks during the day - apparently kids these days have much lower vitamin D levels than kids in the past. Our last nanny told us kids need 3 hours outside each day for healthy development. At the time I thought she was crazy and brushed it off. But every day we do get both kids outside for an extended period of time, it makes all the difference with their demeanor...and sleep.
While Silas is at school, both Brennan and I try to work out, run errands, clean the house, mow the yard...anything to keep us busy and productive with only one kid to look after. It's funny, one kid feels like no kids sometimes (in terms of difficulty), but 2 kids feels like 5...why is that?! But 2pm comes quickly each day when one of us goes to pick up Silas. Since he joined the 3 year old class, he's started staying through naptime at school (he doesn't nap, let's be clear). Prior to that, we would pick him up at noon so he could have his standard 2 hour nap at home. We started noticing he was a challenge at bedtime and wouldn't go to sleep until 9pm and decided it was finally time to drop the nap.
Once he gets home, we definitely try to get outside in our backyard or neighborhood park every day. He has been absolutely OBSESSED with Paw Patrol the last week - makes us play the theme song in the car, knows every word, every character name. I blame my parents for getting him the Paw Patrol Fire Truck for Christmas. He's not even allowed to watch the TV show except a couple episodes on the weekends, but he sings the song and plays with his Paw Patrol trucks every single day. Before we know it, it's 5pm and time to start cooking dinner (from my pre-planned weekly meals of course).
Clementine has finally been pleasant at dinner time, sitting in her high chair and "playing with" solid foods. She's tried strawberries, blueberries, apples, bananas, grapefruit, green beans, avocados and eggs so far. Can't say she has a particular fondness for any of them. She's tried a number of different purees as well and the only one she likes is pumpkin. It's fitting that her due date was the day Starbucks began Pumpkin Spice season, and her momma had a venti pumpkin spice cold brew in her blood the day Clementine came into this world.
Clementine is also starting to say a lot of different "words"...or sounds may be the better term. She 100% says "mama" and knows who her mama is. She says "baba"...actually SCREAMS "baba" any time she is hungry. Sometimes she says "bubba" when she's around her brother - he knows just how to get the biggest smiles and laughs from that girl. And lastly, we all heard her say "Lala" in the car last weekend (conveniently when she was with her Lala - the term Silas lovingly gave to Brennan's mom).
After dinner around 6:15 each night, we go on a "night" walk - complete with battery-operated lights on the stroller and a flashlight for Silas. That gives us all more time outside, but also important to walk after eating to help with digestion! Just writing about how much we try to be outside, I truly cannot imagine living somewhere colder than here. We can basically be outside every day 11 months of the year here - with only a few weeks too cold to go out.
Now comes the fun part...the bedtime "divide and conquer". Remember when I mentioned Brennan being my equal partner in all things? Sometimes we do bath time together with the kids, but lately I've been doing Clementine's bath first while Brennan does the dinner dishes, then Silas gets his own bath and 1:1 time with Brennan. Clementine's routine consists of bottle, book, song, crib. Her favorite books lately are the silly finger puppet books. She laughs SO HARD at the finger puppets, it warms my heart. Then comes a song. I basically go back and forth with 2-3 songs...that's it. I usually play them on Alexa, but if there are technical challenges, I just sing to her.
It's worth noting Brennan and I would sing Lullaby or Three Little Birds to Silas every single night for years. It does sort of break my heart that both of us would do the bedtime routine with Silas together, and now our time is split between the two kids. I think one day soon we will combine the routine and do it as a family again.
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