Clean up, clean up

I had some recent feedback about my cleaning schedule. I posted earlier this year our schedule since it was part of my New Year goals. I fell off the bandwagon when Madison became more mobile. I was running around so much that when she went down for a nap, I needed a break and the last thing I wanted to do while she was napping was clean the house. I kept it picked up and presentable but things got neglected.

I've been trying to let M walk around more independently and not be a Hover-mom. I want her to know that she doesn't need me to watch her play or wander around. I keep my eyes on her and listen out for her. When she's is quiet, she's likely into something, but if she's jibbering, she's just wandering around.

All that said, I'm trying to get my cleaning done(as much as I can) while she plays and wanders around and trying to take a break while she's napping. I also keep weekends free of cleaning. The schedule does not include dishwashing since we wash about 2 loads a day. How is that possible? Here is the schedule that has worked for me so far.

Monday -Dust entire house. Clean all windows and mirrors. Clean litterbox. Wash jeans. Vacuum. Water plants.


Tuesday - Sweep and mop living room, dining room, laundry room and hall. (Sounds like a lot but most of our living room is a rug)  Wash Alan's shirts and colors.


Wednesday -Clean both bathrooms. Toilet, counters, tubs, shower and sweep and mop. Clean litterbox. Wash towels. Dust entire house. Vacuum. Wash dog/cat bowls and Madison's toys.


Thursday - Wash Madison's clothes/crib sheet and our bed sheets. Sweep living room, kitchen, dining room, laundry room and hall.


Friday - Sweep and mop kitchen. Wipe all surfaces including cabinet doors and microwave. Wash colors and whites. Vacuum.

I also found a deep cleaning schedule where you do one thing per month of the year. 

source

Share your cleaning tips with me!

Week in the Life - Day 5 - Monday

This will probably be my last 'Week in the Life' post unless you readers are so interested, you can't stand the thought of not seeing 2 more days. I can't believe average 20 of you are keeping up with this :) I appreciate it! I had a whopping 40 readers on the 1st day post! Crazy!

10am - Madison got up at 9. I got up, fed and let Wilma out since she slept on the bed last night, started a load of clothes and got Madison's food ready.. She has been fed (2 oz apples and prunes and 5 oz milk), played with her sippy cup, which had apple juice in it but she didn't seem to figure that out and she has played in her toy. I have also eaten(peanut butter wheat toast and coffee).

12:30 - I got her dressed and we played in her room for a while. I read to her and she laid down at 11:30 and I started another load of clothes. I got myself ready, ate lunch(leftover pork chop) and scheduled some blogs for later in the week on the local blog, while catching up on some tv.

1pm - I go in Madison's room to check on her and she's wide awake..I get her up, change her diaper and give her a bottle first since I heated up her food too long and it was boiling haha.. I empty the dishwasher and start another load of clothes while she's eating and then I give her 2 oz of squash and corn. I let her play in her toy while I load the dishwasher and wash my first load of bottles and pump parts.

3:00 - She plays in the floor while I put up her clothes and Pandora plays in the background. Then it's cuddle time on the couch while I watch some tv. After lots of eye rubbing, I put her down for a nap. I watch an episode of Khloe and Lamar and 16 and pregnant while eating a fried egg sandwich and putting up coupons that I clipped from yesterday's paper.

 
5:30pm - Madison got up at 4:30. She has eaten and played. I fold 3 loads of clothes while Madison plays in her Pack N Play. I started supper and fed the animals about 5:00

6:30 - Alan came home and left to take the trash and recycling off and I decide to workout while reading my book. He comes home and waters the trees. I played with Madison for about 30 minutes in her room before putting her down for a nap at 6. The chicken is ready and now we are waiting on the pasta and veggies to get done.

7:45 - Madi ate while we ate. Her and Alan played for a bit and we got her jammies on around 7:45 and she was read and in bed. by 8. Alan is working on the lawnmower and here I am. It'll be ice cream and tv time till bed when he gets done.

Hope you enjoyed my Week in the Life. Even though it was only 5 days.. It gives me the blogging bug since I don't blog way too much. I will try to blog more!

Week in the Life - Day 4 - Sunday

9:40am - Alan got up around 8:45 and I heard him get Madison up around 9, but I stay in bed. I had some nightmares and didn't sleep great. I get up about 9:30. Alan has fed Madi and fixed coffee so I fix my breakfast of bagels. Alan then fixes his breakfast of bagels and cereal. We both eat and watch tv(Spongebob of course) while Madison plays in her toy.

10:20 am - Madison has played, worked on crawling and gotten dressed. We read her a book and she's down for a nap. I vacuum and get ready for the day while Alan works out.

 (Can she get any cuter?)

1:30pm - Madison got up at 12.. Alan fed her lunch while I clipped coupons. We eat lunch on the porch(soup and salad). Then we take Madison and Wilma on a walk(notice her rosey cheeks, even though she had on a sun hat). We get back and I read a book and put her down for a nap while Alan fills up Micki and Toby's pool outside.

3pm - Madison is up and has ate. I watched the end of Hope Floats while Alan worked a little bit while she was asleep.

5:30 - Madison laid down at 4:30, 30 minutes after failing at getting her to nap with us on the couch. I started some beans on the stove and Alan hit some golf balls in the yard and I walked around with him after I got done. We then sat I the porch for a few and I started supper(pork chops with onions, beans and rice).

8pm - Madison got up at 5:30. She ate and then we ate. She played, got a bath, we read a book and she's down for the night. We are enjoying our nightly ice cream on the porch and then relax time until bed! This is her eating her strawberries while we eat supper. She loves her mesh teether. Even though it's super messy!

Sleeping beauty

After 5 months of fighting Madison to sleep(including naps), having to swaddle her and rock her to sleep, she is finally napping great and sleeping through the night unswaddled and without having to be rocked and without waking up 12 times a night looking for her pacifier! It's amazing! We decided to let her cry it out a  week ago. It was very hard!, but it worked! She slept from 1:30AM to about 6:30AM solid and then woke up and fell back to sleep until 7:30.

Fast forward through some good and bad nights. Some "sleep through the night" nights and some "wake up every hour" nights. She has now slept the past 4 nights from 8PM to at least 7AM. Thursday morning I had to wake her up at 9.

We have tweaked her schedule a bit, trying to keep her up until 8. She is now eating around 7. Bath at 7:30. Story at 7:45 and bed around 8.

She is still adjusting to naps but is doing much better. We read her a story and then lay her down. Sometimes we will rock her a few minutes to get her calm but she typically doesn't get calm and just squirms. Sometimes she will cry/whine 5-10 minutes and then sleep for at least 45 minutes. Sometimes she doesn't cry at all and will sleep 2 hours. Just depends. She is doing great and that's all that matters to us! Why didn't we do this a month earlier?!

Another goal done..

Along with this goal comes a cleaning schedule. I hate cleaning the entire house in one day and with me not working, the last thing Alan needs to do is help clean on the weekend. I have made a daily cleaning schedule so its something I can do daily and by the weekend, all cleaning and laundry is done.


I got my cleaning schedule printed out and have been following it for a few weeks now. It really helps break up the chores and Alan doesn't have to do anything when he gets home or on the weekends-the way it should be if one person stays home, in my opinion. I got mad at him Saturday when I came home to clothes in the washer. I told him that I do that and he's messing up my routine! :) I have tried to not wash clothes on the weekends so we both can kind of chill out but sometimes we need to, and he took it upon his self to wash 2 loads while I was out to lunch with Amanda. I don't kill myself trying to stick to this schedule because some days Madison will sleep 3-4 hours and some days I am lucky if she sleeps 30 minutes all day. So on the days that she naps, I may do the next days chores or if I don't get today's chores done today, they will get done tomorrow. I thought I would blog my schedule since I have seen some of my friends pinning cleaning schedules on Pinterest. Here it is:


Monday -Dust entire house. Clean all windows and mirrors. Clean litterbox. Wash jeans. Vacuum


Tuesday - Sweep and mop living room, dining room, laundry room and hall. (Sounds like a lot but most of our living room is a rug)  Wash Alan's shirts and colors.


Wednesday -Clean both bathrooms. Toilet, counters, tubs, shower and sweep and mop. Clean litterbox. Wash towels. Dust entire house. Vacuum.


Thursday - Wash Madison's clothes and our bed sheets. Sweep living room, kitchen, dining room, laundry room and hall.


Friday - Sweep and mop kitchen. Wipe all surfaces including cabinet doors and microwave. Wash colors and whites. Vacuum.

Madison's schedule..

I want to preface this with this;

We know Madison is only 6 weeks old and a schedule sounds crazy. We are in no way starving her if it's not one of the times we would like for her to eat nor are we keeping her awake if she's sleepy. Example-she ate every 2-3 hours today and napped afterwards every time. We are mainly focusing on her sleeping in her crib for bedtime and will worry about her routine(or lack thereof) later. We just want her happy and full! :)

With that said, she seems to be adjusting to sleeping in her crib at night. The past 2 nights haven't been perfect but they are getting better. She will lay down around 7 or 8pm, wake up around 10pm to eat then lay back down and sleep till 2-3am, then fall back asleep till 5 or 6am. After 6am, she doesn't want to sleep in her crib, so we have let her sleep in our bed.  This morning she slept from 7am-10am and yesterday she slept from 7am-12pm in our bed. Not sure what it is about that time frame that makes her unhappy about sleeping in the crib but we are working on it.

I actually slept in our bed last night with Alan for the first time since Wednesday. He got up with her around 1 or 2am and stayed in her room until 6 this morning. Once we move her to our room she's perfectly content. Now if we can get her to nap in her crib during the day, I would feel much better! She will nap fine in her little rocker bassinet but once you lay her in the crib, within 5 minutes on the dot, she's crying.

We are taking baby steps to reach our goal of somewhat of a routine.. I know everyday isn't going to be perfect but I'd like to start at least getting her up and having her bedtime at the same time every day/night. But right now, if she wants to sleep till 12, fine by me cause that means I can sleep till 12! I'm still catching up on sleep from the pregnancy!

I'll end with this picture I took today in her Carolina Cutie outfit a friend of Alan's gave her. She's growing up so fast and I swear she gets prettier every day!

Madisons schedule- Day 1.

So I had my 6 week post delivery checkup yesterday and everything went great. The Dr had a counseling session with me, as I'm sure he does with all new moms. Or at least I hope he does. He really emphasized for us to stop rocking her to sleep, for her to start sleeping in her crib and putting her on OUR schedule versus the other way around. You know, all the wrong things we were doing that every parent does.. Every parent, right? Right?

After coming up with a schedule for her with Alan, I put her down for a nap in her crib at 12pm. She cried for 45 minutes, slept for 10, then cried another hour. I got her up at 2, even though she hadn't slept. I fed her and we played, went on a walk and sat on the porch until 4 when I put her back down for another nap.

She cried for 2 hours. I got her up at 6 and me and Alan played with her until his mom came over at 7, then she played with her until Madison wiped out around 7:30. They left and we gave her a bath and put her to bed at 8. I decided to sleep in her room so I could keep an eye on her if she choked.

She cried until 8:20 and just laid there, quietly looking around until 10, when she fell asleep! We decided we would get her up at 12am and 4am to eat. Well when she started whining it was already 2am! She slept 4 hours in her crib! I got her up, fed her(she only ate an ounce) and put her down at 3. She cried for 10 minutes and then was back asleep. I knew it was too good to be true. She woke up crying at 3:30 and didn't stop until I got her up to eat at 6:45. she would stop if I put the pacifiar in her mouth but she can't hold it great yet and it falls out every 10 minutes and I decided I can't get up and down to put it back in every few minutes plus I don't want to teach her that she can't sleep unless she has it in her mouth. So I let her cry... She has now ate 2 ounces and is knocked out in my arms( I'm on my phone blogging) since we have to hold her upright 15 minutes after she eats because of her reflux.

So her schedule today is to get up in 20 minutes at 8am. Stay up till 12(have a HUGE feeling she wont make it) Sleep from 12-2 in her crib(HA!) Up till 4. Sleep from 4-6(ha!) Up until bedtime at 8. Up to eat at 12am and 4am.. Repeat. I have such high hopes.. Give me strength!