Differentiating the Days

I'm not very big on schedules or routines. So when I first left my job to home/un preschool my twins full-time, the days just tumbled one after the other in chaotic succession. We did a ton of traveling, went on a ton of outings, did lots of activities. But there was no particular rhythm to any of it ... and I felt pretty overwhelmed and exhausted most of the time.

Worse, I'd find I couldn't begin to remember what I done the week or month before; the days all seemed the same, and I could sense I would soon be feeling lost.

My first step in getting a better handle on my time was setting up a big dry-erase calendar, partly to keep track of upcoming events, from playdates to nights out, but just as importantly to keep track of what we had done. I jot down a few things about each day -- "playdough, car painting, Camel Playground, pizza with Amy and Efrem" -- just enough to fix each day in memory. It helped immensely: I no longer seemed to be drifting from one undifferentiated day to another, and I could look back over what we had done with much more clarity.

This fall I'm going two steps farther. I'm building a few regular weekly activities into our schedule, and I'm sketching out more ideas in advance of what else to do each week. We're still very loose by anyone's standards, but suddenly both I and my kids have much more of a mental road map to go by: Tuesdays are when a whole passel of kids and parents come over to play; Wednesdays we go to music class in the morning; Thursdays we generally take a day trip somewhere. Perhaps the key to the whole set-up is the regular event I've scheduled for Mondays: a babysitter, to give me a chance to get organized, catch my breath, and have some precious chunks of time to myself.

Spending the preschool years with your kid(s) full-time can be delightful and transformative for everyone involved; it's also grueling. Giving a bit more form to the days and weeks, I've found, makes it all a crucial bit easier.