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JDaniel4s Mom

growing & learning with him

Getting Back to Our Pre-Holiday Schedule

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During the holidays I tried to keep JDaniel on schedule for his quiet time in the afternoon and meal times, but I would be the first to admit they veered a little of course.
Many of the things that fill our daily schedule were not available during most of December and we had to find different things to do.

What Changed

There was no school, library story times, or playgroup for all or part of the month.
The boy next door and his family went away for two weeks. That means there wasn’t a call at four o’clock to see if he could come to play and we couldn’t head out to see if they are out playing after lunch.

Other changes:

It rained cold rain for days.
My husband was home for a few days. We loved having him home, but it did change our routine.
We tried to spend more time with my mom who lives in the same town we do. We see her on Fridays every week, but I tried to go over more. She loves seeing us despite the fact she has to hunt for her comb and brush after we leave.
JDaniel decided to start sleeping later in the morning. Hooray!
We rushed to try to get Christmas shopping done before everyone started their Christmas vacation.
I didn’t have my mom’s group at church to meet with.

Back to Our Scheduled Activities

While we enjoyed spending time together as a family and JDaniel and I had a great time together ( except for occasional meltdowns) , I am ready to get back to our regular schedule.
Yesterday was JDaniel’s first day back at preschool. He really didn’t want to go. I  think he believes I get lonely. He just wanted to play with me in his room.
 

When we absolutely had to go. He went happily. I was so worried he would have a meltdown. I am so glad I was wrong.

Today we will head back to story time at the library. I have really missed seeing the story time librarian Amber. She is expecting in March and should be close finally looking like she is pregnant. I can’t wait to see how she looks.Tomorrow we have preschool again. I hope it goes as well as it did on Tuesday.Next week playgroup and my mom’s group will start back up. Our schedule will be back to its pre-holiday routine. It was hard to leave the routine behind for the holidays, but I will cherish the memories we made and the return to the routine completely next week.

How did your children do with returning to the old routine?
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Comments

  1. I’m surprised your library story hours stopped. Ours kept going and even had a Christmas crafts session the Thursday before Christmas.

    Glad you’re getting back to normal. It feels good!

  2. Glad things are back to normal now. I also enjoyed the holidays with my little guy, but was happy that he went back to school. Not so much for “me time” (although that is a perk) but for him to interact with his friends again and get back into a routine. Hope your new year is treating you well.

  3. Leaving vacation behind is hard. We all enjoyed sleeping in and getting up after 8. I get up at 6 am on work days, Anna gets up at 6:45 am. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes.

  5. We need to get back to schedule here, too. We also had no library time, no playdates scheduled… and I didn’t take them many places b/c I was trying to keep us from getting the stomach virus we all had at Christmas last year.
    And now the youngest is in a toddler bed, so I’m pretty sure quiet time/nap time is going to be a little different….
    Good luck!

  6. I used to cry for days when they had to return to school. I loved having them home with me!

  8. I was glad to get back to routine myself. My kids did well except my 3 yr. old was asking for daddy a lot. she misses him and loved having him home for two weeks 🙂

  9. school vacations can be looooong. Ours was especially as we’ve all been sick. anyway, stopped by to say happy new year!

  10. We started school today. I decided to take a mild approach and ease into it. Transitions never go well in our house, so we just take it slow. 🙂 They did good today, though!

  11. Don’t you love when they start sleeping in later?

    =)

    PS. Not so much when that happens again, as teenagers…

  13. Doesn’t it feel nice to get back to routine? My Hubs has been home the last two weeks. We love having him around, but you’re right, it does change things up a bit!

  14. When Joey, Aimee, and the twins were getting on the plane to go back to Kentucky after Christmas, Keillor and Emaline kept looking around for us to board the plane as well! As soon as they got home, they wanted to come back to Grandmommy’s house.

  15. Thinking all of us can only handle so much celebration, rich foods and constant bombardment of holiday spirit – real or otherwise. And particularly for children of any age…a routine is invaluable and they usually do well with it.

  16. My children are all back to their pre-Christmas routines. Keith is 42 and he’s back at work and had to go to Dallas on business. Troy is 41 and back to work also. Reid is 35 (almost 36) and jokes that cancer takes no time off for holidays and he went down last Friday for the clinical trial he’s in at MD Anderson which is now pretty routine. This week he’s preparing to leave for a friend’s wedding at sea which should be fun. So, things are back to normal for my “kids”…they’re always your kids no matter how old they become.

    I always enjoy reading about your activities with JDaniel because it often brings back memories for me. Beware…once they’re in school they grow up very quickly. The time really flies.

  17. Well my little ones are over six feet tall now so if they can’t adjust to a schedule change, it isn’t my problem!

    I read this though with the knowledge that I am also glad to be back in my routine after a crazy, but wonderful, December. Sometimes it’s just comforting to know what comes next (like Alpha Thursday!)

    xxoo,

    RMW

  19. Library story hour was a special time when my children were small.. so nice to get back to normal even tho the Holidays were special.. my house looks bare now that the ornaments are packed away..
    Nice post
    Sandy

  20. Ha! My kids think that there should be something “fun” every day now. It’s been a wee bit of an adjustment now that I’ve scaled back our activities!

  21. Ah, the old routine! It’s so nice not to have one, but oh so nice to have one! lol

  22. It was good for all of us to get back to the routine. I never stopped working, but DH and the boys had time off from school. I think they were all ready to go crazy cooped up in the house, so they all are happy to be able to actually leave the house and see other people…LOL!

  23. I’m totally nodding my head at getting my schedule back. ALthough I must say that during this break, Ihave managed to retrain my kids to do their house jobs. That has been nice.
    But schedules are so much more important when they are small.

  24. My girls were fine yesterday. They got up on time without incident, came home and went straight to their homework, went to basketball practice, ate, had story time and then went to bed. Today, not so lucky! They crashed this evening and both didn’t know what to do with themselves. We finally came up with reading for 30 minutes in their rooms in their own beds and going to bed at 8 instead of 8:30. Neither one of them argued with me. They were wiped out…they just didn’t know how to admit it.

  25. This was one of my most favorite Christmas seasons. We made some great memories. But it was hard to get back into routine. I think we’re mostly there…but we both dragged our feet about it 😉

  28. We only got a week off so I wasn’t ready for my kids to go back to school. But! We’re in year round school so my girls only have two weeks of school, then they’re off for 3 weeks!

  31. As much as I love the holidays and taking a break from routiine, I am always glad to go back to it. And it seems the children feel the same way, even if they say otherwise! It sounds like you had a wonderful Christmas break though.

  32. Oh, I remember those days. As all the non-homeschooling moms rejoiced that their kids could be home and they didn’t have to get up early each morning, I mourned the loss of activities that took us out of the home. Grass is always greener. LOL

  34. Like you I enjoy routine. Even though my kids are older I enjoy the routine of the school year. During the summer the whole routine changes and while I adapt, it’s still out of routine.

  35. I’m a non-routine kind of gal. Always have been, switching it up whenever I can. I’m a little bit like a fruit fly. So the holidays suited me just fine. I am kind of out of sorts now that the girls are back in school. Time to get to work…pppffft.
    Dana

  36. I’ve never been good at following a routine or a schedule so I think my kids are kind of used to that but my oldest is home from school until Monday so we are going to enjoy our next 3 lazy days while they last.

  37. When my son was a preschooler (before September) we used to do a lot of activities that didn’t close for the holidays. Somehow we managed to find a playgroup that actually did an extra day in the holidays on top of the normal weekly session. Other things closed and we would try to catch up with friends, do something new etc. This holiday from school we found we had more freedom to do things (as now out of preschool routine) and we finally got round to some art activities that we’d been meaning to do for a while as well as going out & visiting friends. Was sad to take him back to school yesterday, but looking forward to the next holiday – it’s only 5 weeks away today.

  39. I could relate to a lot of what you wrote: enjoying the specialness of extra time together as a family in December, but also missing the security that comes from a routine.

    This week we are slowly getting back into our “normal” routine…although with homeschooling, normal is flexible!! 🙂 We did have some snow one day that changed my plans for that day. We get snow infrequently enough that when we do, we always treat it as a Snow Day and skip lessons to go outside and play! 🙂

  40. First day of going back to school was also a bit rough and involved some tears here 🙂

  41. It always feels great getting routines back to normal. This week almost feels comforting in its structure!

    I like the way you describe issues with children. It’s so easy to follow along…if I had small children still I think I’d be surviving with the help of your blog!

    Thanks for a great link to the letter “G”.

    A+

  42. He is so sweet… I am glad that you had time to make so many more memories…
    Where does the time go?

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