Millie loves her second week at Primary School so far and it’s got us into a great routine for getting up early and getting things finished. Typically I get up at 7am during the week and leave Luca with Gabriele whilst I get showered and dressed, put on my makeup, feed the animals and then make Millie’s lunchbox and breakfast. By the time I wake her up at 8am I help her to put on her school uniform, plait her hair and make sure she’s been to the toilet and left her bedroom in some sort of order.
Millie & Gabriele Ready For The School Run
Usually Gabriele wakes up a few minutes after 8am when Luca’s alarm goes for work, so I pop upstairs and get him changed and fed whilst Millie finishes her breakfast of either cereal or toast. By about 8:30am Luca leaves for work and Millie usually finishes eating breakfast and has five minutes to brush her teeth and put on her shoes. I get the children into the car and drive some way to school and park up nearby and walk the rest in order to arrive for 8:45am to drop Millie off.
Each morning I’m home by 9am and ready to conquer the world and I have to say it’s brilliant to get everything into order between Gabriele’s naps and feeds. Millie finishes school at 3:15pm and Gabriele and I leave the house at 3pm to go and collect her. If Luca and I go to the gym in the week I’ll bring the children home from school first, make them dinner and get them changed before driving over to Luca’s parents to babysit whilst we spend an hour at the gym after Luca gets home at 5:30pm. Then we collect the children, come home to put them to bed by 7pm, get showered and changed and I cook dinner so that we can sit together and eat at some unholy hour before bed around midnight, ready to start over again in the morning. If I’m lucky I’ll get four or five hours sleep or some nights seven even but Gabriele’s routine is still sporadic through teething and feeding so it’s rarely the same hours every night.
Gabriele Finishing Up His Lunch Of Baby Rice
Although it’s a fairly simple daily routine it makes the hours fly by and all I seem to do is jump between one thing and another, always preparing for the next few hours and working around the children, Luca, the animals and housework. On a good day I’ll get a ten or twenty minute rest, and on a bad day I literally don’t stop from sun up to sun down. Being at the gym somehow gives me the energy to carry on, where I’d normally be falling asleep standing doing the dishes at night, now I’m full of beans and actually find it hard to fall asleep because I’m still alert and energetic well into the evening.
I’m trying to eat more healthily by consciously changing what goes into our shopping basket each week. Instead of crackers and biscuits I’m aiming for more fruit and raw vegetables and salad to nibble on as a snack, and although I still eat like a horse to keep me going all day, teamed with going to the gym most nights I’m gradually returning to my pre-pregnancy weight. I’m half a stone away from the weight I was aged seventeen some years before I had the children and although I don’t expect to ever be that weight again, it’s nice to know that I’m not five stone heavier so many years down the line from my youth.
If any man out there questions what his better half does at home all day on maternity leave I say give them your stilettos girls and get them walking on a treadmill juggling for twenty-four hours straight! Life with a family is definitely challenging, it’s tough and sometimes never-ending but at the very same time it is purely incredible and every second is more than worthwhile. And I suspect it will make me appreciate my retirement all the more when it finally comes!
My hair is still falling out at a ridiculous rate and I’ll be shocked if nobody buys me a bobble hat for Christmas in fear of my thinning hair being too inadequate to keep me warm. Or worse yet I get snatched from the side of the road whilst walking the dog when a farmer mistakes me for an over-fed already plucked escapee Christmas turkey!
