Our New Schedule

I love this picture, because it really describes how I feel many days with a 3 year-old in the house and a baby on the way.

As I wrote about before, coming up with a daily schedule has always been a desire of mine. Well, I finally came up with one! I know that I will be making changes to it probably the first week I use it, but I really just wanted something to give me a rough idea and plan for the days that we don't have anything else scheduled outside of the house to do. I also realize that this is going to completely change when the baby comes, but that's ok too. What I figured out will work for now.

I wanted to come up with a schedule, because I'm the type of person who needs one. If I don't have a specific plan to do something - chances are it's not going to get done. I am also desperate to "schedule" in more time with God, because if I don't purposely do this, I seem to run out of time. (Joshua will get up early, I decide to go to bed early, etc...) I also wanted to set some more concrete time aside for Joshua. I'm learning quicker than ever that it's very easy to spend all day with someone but that doesn't mean that you're spending much quality time together. Joshua is growing up before my eyes, and I want to spend as much quality time with him while he's home with me and not in school yet. So, here's a rough idea of what our new schedule looks like. I didn't include many exact times on here, because I know that it will always be changing:

6 a.m. - I will get up, shower and get ready for the day before
anyone else gets up.

6:45 a.m. - Read my bible and pray until 7:30 or until Joshua gets up.

8:30 - 11 a.m. - Praise & Worship time with Joshua
- Learning time (letter recognition, whatever we are
working on)
- Outside time
- Free play time for Joshua

While Joshua is having his "free play" time, I will be doing my best to work on cleaning a specified room for that day. I have a specific room or area of the house for each day set aside. I'm figuring that this will be more manageable (and less overwhelming), if I'm focusing on only one of these a day.

11:30 or so - lunch time

1:00 - 2:30 - nap or quiet time. Joshua does not always take a nap lately, but I want to teach him to have some quiet time in his room even if he does not sleep. He has plenty of toys in his room, so he should be easily occupied!

While Joshua is in his room, I have set aside some random things that I need to spend time on at least once a week. (Bills, balancing the checkbook, grocery list, new visitor ministry for church, etc.) I'm trying to keep my "dependence" on this time down to a minimum, because lately I just want to take a nap when Joshua is in his room! I used to completely rely on the time Joshua was taking a nap to complete all of my responsibilities for the week, but this just wasn't working anymore. I ended up taking a nap instead, Joshua wouldn't stay in his room that day, etc. To save myself a lot of headaches, I'm going to try to do only some of those things during nap time, and the others will have to wait until he goes to bed at night.

So, there's the rough schedule that we will be attempting. I guess I wrote it down on my blog for myself more than anyone else, because I'm not sure who else cares what I do all day! Thanks for your patience (if you made it this far in my post!), and we'll see how this goes!

Picture credit given to: www.gettyimages.com