Early to Rise Challenge: Day 4

Weekend Recap

 The Early to Rise Challenge is technically suspended on the weekends, which is why there aren't any posts for days two and three.  Knowing what being slothful does to my days when I sleep in (and also vaguely remembering some article about sleep being better when waketimes are consistent for all seven days), I am trying to keep my six o'clock commitment on Saturdays and Sundays as well.  But my actual posts about it may be somewhat inconsistent.

Saturday

Getting up at six was relatively easy, since my husband had to leave at six for a forensics tournament and could turn on the light for me before he left.  The two kids and I spent the whole morning shopping (took advantage of some nice Target coupons that Money Saving Mom posted about).  Pippin has suddenly hit that stage where everybody must be told that he's getting a new little sister soon.  Fortunately everyone has been most gracious and understanding about it.  After we got home, I literally fell asleep playing a game with him and ended up cancelling the afternoon chore plans in favor of a nap.

Sunday


It took me six minutes to haul myself out of bed.  When not pregnant, a sufficiently-motivated me has little trouble just hopping out of bed and hitting the morning full-strength.  But at 34+ weeks pregnant I am creaking and groaning with every movement and usually feel like I need a block and tackle to achieve verticality.  Yesterday was particularly bad - I actually had to get my husband out of bed to help me to the toilet for my 3 am bathroom trip.  My joints plus the relaxin hormone make a devastating combination.  I feel a bit like Mr. Hilltop from Young Frankenstein (he's the elderly gentlemen that assists Dr. Frankenstein in his lecture at the beginning of the movie), and I keep getting this image of Gene Wilder watching my progress and dryly remarking, "Nice hopping."

But I did it eventually and I did it without rousing my husband as a wake-up buddy (which is a big achievement for me).  I also discovered how difficult it is to put on maternity pants the right way around when it's completely dark.

However, on to today...


Not quite as good as Sunday, but deceptive because it also includes several minutes spent in prayer with my husband before he left for work.

This morning's post gives the challenge as

Wake Up With a Plan for Your Day


Please excuse me while I take a minute to stop laughing...

My wonderful plan went perfectly up until seven o'clock when the kids woke up and I tripped over my husband's laptop while slicing some banana coconut bread for their snack.  This would be the laptop with his lesson plan and lectures and everything on it.  Children were then hastily shoved into shoes and an eclectic array of garments (Sunshine ended up in a Teletubbies pajama top, an Ecoposh soaker and Hello Kitty leggings) chosen with no guiding principles other than suitability for going outside to the car.  Then we all experienced the joys of Kellogg Avenue at rush hour traveling all the way across town.
This is actually my very first sit-down cup of coffee.  Note the time.
But the experience has two-fold benefits.  One is that my husband has now informed me that I have redeemed myself for my sin yesterday of disassembling our pasta roller, though I think I still need to include a pledge never to do so again should we ever renew our wedding vows.

And the second is that he found out about the blogging challenge this morning.  I hadn't actually told him because I tend to take on too many projects.  (And now I have blackmail currency to keep going, heh heh heh.)  But I find that I'm soooo much more productive when I have structure, especially when I actually write down my tasks.  I discovered this last year when I did Money Saving Mom's 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home challenge.  In fact, I felt so energized by the experience that I've been trying to reprise the full challenge since the school year started.  It hasn't gone quite as well as last time - the first time was in the middle of my first trimester and the second time was in December.  Both were busts by the second week for various reasons which can probably be deduced by the timing.

After the New Year, I had realized that one of the struggles I was having with the challenge was that Crystal for whatever reason had put the majority of the most involved tasks on Tuesdays.  Which are horrible days for me to get things done, since I have MOPS every other Tuesday morning and Pippin has preschool every afternoon.  So once I gave myself permission to get creative with rescheduling the tasks, it went much better.  Up until Week Three in which pregnancy-related anemia, extreme joint pain and nesting urges to do more and more combined and forced me to take it easier.  That was about five weeks ago, and I'm still on Week Three.  BUT... I'm making progress, albeit slowly.  I hope I can get through Week Four by the time the baby gets here...

The one thing I have been consistently failing is to craft a more structured morning routine.  Which, in a sense, is what today's early rising challenge is about.  I do need to use my mornings more intentionally.  Too often I put off my to-do list until the afternoon.  And then it turns into a third-trimester nap.  It's a bit late today to schedule my morning, but I can commit to partitioning my daily goals into morning and afternoon tasks from here on out.

And today at least I can prioritize two goals for right after lunch:

  • Finish drying and folding two loads of laundry
  • Re-create the week's meal plan (in further irony, in light of today's theme, I managed to lose the week's meal plan after my Saturday shopping trip... before I got it written out on the menu board in the kitchen)

And that may have to be it for my daily goals too, since I have an OB visit right after naptime.  But it's all about baby steps, really.  Time and time again I relearn that it's better to commit to fewer, smaller things and get them done rather than trying and failing to reach the moon in a single day.

1 comments:

  • Dianna | 3/05/2013 9:52 AM

    I am with you there! I scheduled far too much work to be done yesterday. Once I gave myself permission to focus on just a few things, everything went much better. Way to go getting out of bed!

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