Brushing hair and teeth are mandatory. The kids have to check off on their chore chart that they are doing these activities because if we don’t have them check off that they are doing these things… they don’t. These are the first chores of the morning. I also tell the kids to get dressed. This is mostly successful.

EC is supposed to sweep under the kitchen table basically daily. In practice it happens a few times a week when it is gross and I remind her. MC is supposed to mop once a week on Thursdays.

Academics are a mandatory part of Mon-Fri. EC has a literal physical day planner with her schooling activities mapped out. She knows what she is supposed to do on any given day. She does need assistance with some of her tasks but given that you went to graduate school and she’s in 4th grade… I’m completely confident that you could help her with anything that comes up. Sometimes she doesn’t understand the framing of a math problem. Sometimes they both need a little help gathering up supplies for a science experiment. Sometimes there is a question about history or writing. None of these questions are complicated. MC has to spend 15 minutes a day on a computer reading program and otherwise I spend a lot of time saying, “So do you have everything you need for your ES? Should you produce something today?”

Once a month the kids have to turn in 2 assignments each for language arts, history, math, and science. EC knows how she is doing this and everything is set up for her. MC has a variety of fairly simple books they can work through to produce for most of these subjects. MC still needs a lot more reading support but they can be independent on a lot of the work. (But the reading is coming along!)

Kids cannot use the screen until ALL academics and chores are done. They should not start computer academics until after other chores are done.

We (the grown ups) try to load the dishwasher and turn it on in the evening. The kids have to empty it first thing in the morning. If it isn’t clean/ready to be emptied I don’t make the kids wait on screen time until it is.

The kids should be setting the table for meals. Gentle reminders are usually plenty. “Hey it’s time to eat! We need plates!” They are fairly cooperative because they like to eat.

The kids have to clean up their stuff from the living room and they have to tidy their stuff from the bedroom and play room.

Making a meal is an optional chore for the kids. It’s on the chore list, but if the kids do it they get massive bonus points because it is not a kid responsibility in my mind. It’s a kindness they do to help out.

Don’t worry about chore points at all while you are here. I will catch up when I tabulate the sheets. Totes not your job. Just remind the kids to update the chart. They know how that works.

Screen time is paid for in 1 hour blocks. The kids know how to write down that they are using the screen but they sometimes need some reminders to keep up with it because they get a bit lazy. The kids know how to set their own timers so that they are tracking their behavior.

I usually limit the kids to about 3 hours of screen time in a day. Rarely they get more than that. In practice if you are feeling overwhelmed as the caregiver during a short crunch-period like me being in labor…

Dude. Do whatever the fuck you want with screen time. It’s not going to long-term harm them and all you need to do is get through the time in one piece. It will all be fine. You don’t have to micromanage or worry about all the habits the way I do. 🙂 If you feel like giving them a bonus 6 hours and you don’t think they should have to be charged chore points for it because it is a decision you are making as the Adult In Charge… go for it. I won’t complain in any way. It will all be fiiiiiiine.

Everything else on their chore list is something you don’t need to worry about. Laundry is “as needed”. Gardening is rarely assigned and is more often opt-in because they want to earn bonus points. They can get points for exercising but in practice… that basically never happens.

I think it’ll be ok.

Apparently hitting my “I’m full term” week means that I’m taking this preparation more seriously. Ha. Feel free to read these posts slowly or just read them while you are here and actively needing this information. Anyone who is not going to be babysitting can obviously skip this information… unless it’s interesting. Then you do you.

Bedtime in our house is pretty relaxed. We have interruptions because of events or dinner guests or stuff like that and that makes our routine fall pretty flat. The only thing that is mandatory is that the kids brush their teeth before bed. MC’s bedtime is 8pm (or they are a grumpy bear) and EC must be in bed by 9:30 but in practice she often goes to bed much earlier.

When we are just hanging out at home by ourselves we tend to finish up dinner/house chores/other stuff by 6 or 6:30. When we finish I encourage them to go brush their teeth pretty much right away because the earlier in the evening they do it the less they whine at me about doing it. If you wait until 7:45 it goes quite poorly.

After brushing teeth we tend to settle in for reading/snuggling. At this point both kids are enjoying taking turns reading out loud even though Noah does most of our bed time reading. MC put me to sleep the other night reading a book to just me when Noah and EC weren’t ready for bed at 7:30. That was so sweet my heart melted. (Yes I do read to my children too…. but reading to one another is a huge bonding task in our house. Everyone is proud to participate.)

I don’t mandate jammies but I do suggest them in the winter because otherwise the kids wake up freezing and feel yucky.

Ah, I make them shut the screen off no later than 7pm so that it doesn’t interfere with their sleep pattern too much.

I need to distract myself and expressing my feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewings isn’t helping very much. So here’s some stuff I need to start writing down. I’m going to write a series of posts over the next three months. I’m going to document as much as I can about how I say things and why I say them. A friend is going to stay with us for a bit around my due date (because even as I whiiiiiiiiiiiine about how I feel like I can’t ask for things… I did a better job of arranging labor support this time than last time. I was way more clear and demanding about what I asked for and I did find a person who could say yes. I feel like karmically I have used up my asking for a while.)

S&R stands for scripts and routines. You are going to see that attached to all of the posts.

I’ll start with mornings.

In the morning the kids wake up sometime between 5:30 and 7. Obviously it is better for me when they sleep later but… what am I going to do? Rarely if we have an outing that goes late they sleep till 8 but it is incredibly freakish. Don’t expect them to sleep past 7.

Most of the time the kids want to immediately move to the couch with me for a morning snuggle. Noah usually makes breakfast while the three of us sit on the couch and talk about randomness. I assume that your routine will more closely resemble that of the routine we maintain when Noah is not around. So we’ll skip over the ridiculously awesome part of every day that involves Noah cooking. You’ll get that part when we aren’t in the hospital.

I have no idea if the kids will want to sit on the couch and have a morning chat with you. My attitude towards this kind of stuff with the kids is that I rarely offer but I don’t refuse. You of course will have your own comfort level. You can decide if you are comfortable with two minutes or twenty. Or more. Chatting with them is fun.

When Noah isn’t here I wait until the kids complain that they want food and I get up. I tend to go back and forth between a couple kinds of breakfasts with the kids. I try to make sure there is a fruit and a protein. I go back and forth between a carbohydrate or a vegetable but I rarely do both at once.

Examples: fruit & granola & yogurt, eggs & potatoes & bell pepper in a stir fry, breakfast pastry & fruit & lunch meat, cereal & fruit & milk & cheese, nuts & fruit & cheese & bread.

I’m not saying you MUST FEED THEM WHAT I DO. I’m saying this is what I will have in the house. If you want to feed them whatever the heck combinations you want… rock on. I just find I do better knowing what a given child is accustomed to because then the little sucker argues with me less. Like, if you want to give vegetables and carbs and protein for breakfast it’s not a big deal. They eat a lot of fruit.

You’d better believe we will have a full larder of food when you are here. Going to the store won’t be an issue.

Like, when we run out of fresh fruit… we have lots of canned/preserved and the kids love it.

After breakfast I ask the kids to get dressed and brush their teeth and their hair (EC doesn’t really brush her hair and I don’t care).

I notice that I tend to divide the day into little checklists I rattle off on my fingers. I try to keep it to 2 or 3 things per list. After breakfast the three I say repeatedly: hair, teeth, clothes. They still need reminding. We are not a household that likes hygiene. We have a grudging relationship with society where we admit that other people require it of us.

After that I walk over to the chore chart list and I say, “Ok… what chores need to be done?” The kids usually need to be told to wash their hands with soap before unloading the dishwasher. Because of course they do. It’s not like we have had this conversation every day for years or anything.

Ahem.

Everyone is responsible for clearing their own dishes to the sink/counter area. Usually a grown up loads the dishwasher but the kids are completely capable of doing so and I will probably ask them to just do that. They get a butt-load of points for washing dishes so they are usually happy to chip in.

The chore list is important because they earn points for their chores. Washing dishes is 20 points and that’s really forking high in our scale. I think it’s twice what any other chore is worth (I’m too lazy to walk over and check) because it is so far an adult chore and them doing it is covering for something an adult should be doing and they get bonus points for that.

EC is supposed to sweep the floor as needed and check every day. In practice this means she does it when I tell her it’s gross and we are going to get bugs.

FMC is supposed to mop about once a week. Of course this means they do it approximately when I go, “Dude… this is nasty.”

A lot of their chore list are “suggestions” and not requirements. If they do those things they get points for it because we are trying to encourage habits but I don’t require them because I’m not that big of a hypocrite. I don’t do frequent sit ups even though they would be good for me either.

But they empty the dishwasher and set the table as a pretty major “every day” part of the habit of life.

We try to get chores done by 9. Then we transition into academics.

Right now we have to deal with the fact that we have to produce documentation for the charter school. That means work books. Boooooo workbooks. The kids have a huge stack in their play room. They prefer to do stuff on the computers. FMC has to do 15 minutes a day of this reading program. That’s on the computer and they know how to log in. Both of them would love to spend most of the rest of the time on Khan Academy doing math and JavaScript… but we can’t turn that in to the charter school.

I require them to do a solid hour of work on something that can be turned in. We have to produce for: language arts (spelling, writing, or grammar all count), science (we have a huge number of options here from reading a science oriented book to them and having them draw pictures to we have really awesome curriculum for biology, chemistry, and physics… there are so many cool experiments in the workbooks), math (Khan Academy doesn’t count! EC can do Life of Fred or one of the other workbooks; FMC has several workbook options), and history (read a book about a historical person and write a book report, work on the CA history comic book or time line, watch documentaries about history and do the workbook write up).

After they work for an hour on stuff for the school they get to play with something academic for another hour. I don’t really care what they do. Sometimes they do language stuff (we have Signing Time videos and FMC works on Duolingo). Sometimes they play on Khan Academy for a while (EC in particular is into their coding stuff). They like playing Human Resource Machine. Sometimes we research something kind of random like the history of fashion or something about travel or researching a person or watching videos in another language or something. We do a lot of stuff. The general motto for this is: Be Curious.

Ok. That’s all I have in me to write today.