A Day In The Life {March 2022 – Part 1}

Hello my friends! I haven’t shared a day-in-the-life post since I had Dayton last summer, and I wanted to document one of the days before he starts walking around. Things will change sooo much once he’s moving! Right now we’re in a pretty steady rhythm, so I figured it was a good time to take a bunch of photos and share what life looks like on an hour-by-hour basis.

I’m endlessly fascinated by how people spend their time. My default mode in life, for better or worse, is extreme productivity. For a lot of my life, I’ve been obsessed with seeing how much I can squeeze into each hour. Sometimes it’s a huge gift and helps me accomplish big things, and other times it’s unhealthy and I end up missing out on some of the joy in life. I’m learning to balance it better as I get older.

Having children has made a big impact on my desire to slow down and enjoy the present moment. I say this truthfully: if I could press pause on this stage of life, I would. I think I could spend a couple of years with a 6-month-old and a 2-year-old and not get tired of it. I know that these years are going to be over in a blink, so I’m really enjoying them and savoring the monotony of these baby years.

Why do I share these posts? Well, mostly because I love seeing how people spend their days, so I figured I’d share my day with you. Haha…is that weird? It’s weird, I think. I don’t care who you are…any career, lifestyle, age range, whatever, I’d loooove to see what goes on in a typical day for you. (Creepy much?) But seriously! If any one of you decided to do a blog or vlog and share a typical day, I would devour that content.

(Side note: I think that’s why I love reading memoirs so much! It’s a little peek into someone else’s world. I love asking questions about what people in different careers actually do in day. Like, I get that you’re in meetings all day, or you’re a stay-at-home mom watching kids all day, but like…what do you do with your time? It’s so fun to know.)

Also, I love looking back at previous day in the life posts I’ve written. My life has changed so much since I started blogging in 2017! Here are a few day in the life posts, if you want to see:

A Day In The Life {Summer 2018}

A Day In The Life {Winter 2019}

A Day In The Life {Pregnant With Milo}

A Day In The Life {Toddler Edition}

I have a hybrid work/stay at home setup right now, and it’s working very well for this first year of Dayton’s life! Today I’ll share a recap of a typical work day when I had childcare, and tomorrow I’ll share a stay-at-home day. We have a nanny come to our house (hi, T!) a few days a week so I can have some hours to get my work done, and then I do the stay-at-home-mom thing a couple days a week. I feel like this is the best situation I could hope for while I’m breastfeeding Dayton for his first year of life. He’s nearby when I need to feed him, and then if I need to duck out of the house to shoot photos or visit a restaurant or head to a lunch meeting, I can bring my breast pump.

Here’s a day in the life right now with two babies:

6:00 am: alarm goes off. I get up, make some warm lemon water, turn on the fireplace, and do my morning alignment time: on Mondays, it’s a 20 minute meditation. So cozy! I love the house first thing in the morning when it’s all quiet and calm. (Side note: I used to make coffee right when I woke up, but my March goal is to get my coffee intake back down to just one cup per day, so I’m not drinking coffee the very second I wake up. It’s hard at first!)

6:30 am: I start getting that caffeine into my system. Ahhhh… So I still absolutely love my ember mug, but since I often drink my coffee while I’m breastfeeding Dayton, I’ve been using this incredible Yeti 14 oz rambler for my morning cup of coffee. Since it has a sturdy lid, I can sip it while I’m holding Dayton without worrying about spilling scalding coffee on his head, and it still keeps my coffee hot for a while in the morning. Not quite as long as the Ember, but I typically finish my coffee before it has gotten cold.

My morning priority items before the babies are awake: alignment time (like gratitude, meditation, a short workout), caffeine, and unload the dishwasher. Haha! If I can get all three of those things done before it’s time to get Dayton up for his first feeding, my day is off to a great start!

^ smiling because I got them done just as Dayton is waking up. It’s 6:48 am.

Ok, I know it’s a bunch of random pictures of me in my robe, but that’s a typical morning around here. Change out my laundry real fast (because Dayton’s now making a lot of noise upstairs and is definitely trying to get my attention…) and I fold a few pieces of laundry to take upstairs to the boys’ rooms.

^ I love this time of year! Not yet 7:00 and the backyard is already flooded with light. We’re one week away from Daylight Savings Time starting, so my early mornings will be very dark starting next week. But I’m enjoying the sunshine for now!

7:03 am: heading upstairs to get my Dayton baby!

Probably annoyed that I’m taking a picture of him instead of immediately feeding him. I would be, too.

Gah. I love this sweet little face first thing in the morning.

Ok, this is one of my favorite parts of the whole day. Each morning, I get Dayton up around 7 am, which is right when the Today Show starts on NBC. Milo isn’t awake yet, Nate is typically showering and getting ready to head into the office, and Dayton and I snuggle up on the couch and I nurse him and sip my coffee and we watch the first 20 minutes of the show together. I love it so much.

And then he’s all happy and rosy-cheeked, and we look at each other and smile and have a little morning chit chat before big brother is awake. Because let’s be honest…once the two-year-old is awake, he kind of makes sure that all the attention is on him. Ha. So these first few moments with my baby are sweet and slow.

The biggest smiles! I love you, baby D!

The arm flaps are my favorite at this age.

I didn’t use a Haakaa milk collector with Milo, and I’m so glad I’m using it now with Dayton. It’s the best $13 I’ve spent on baby gear FOR SURE. It basically collects all the drips from one side while I’m nursing him on the other. I only use it for the first feeding of the day (because that’s the biggest feeding after going a full 12 hour night without feeding him) and so this little silicone breast pump is usually able to collect 2-4 oz of drips for me. And I know that 2 oz doesn’t seem like much, but over the course of the week I’ll get 15-20 oz of extra milk, which is the equivalent of about 5 pumping sessions (aka 75 minutes of my time.)

I throw on some clothes and put on a bit of makeup…just enough to feel put together for the day of work. Nate often gets Milo up and dressed and fed while I’m getting myself ready.

Green juice to start my day!

Around 7:45 Milo comes downstairs…aka it is GO TIME. Haha! As soon as Milo is awake, I need to have all engines fired up and ready to go. 2 years old is so much fun and it requires so much energy.

Big hugs for daddy before he heads out the door to work!

8:00 am: I have a couple hours to hang out with my boys before childcare starts and I can begin my work day. Dayton takes a morning nap, so we usually just hang out in the house for the morning hours. Milo had a lot of fun sitting by the front door and opening my junk mail.

I made a silly sound to get them to both look up at the same time, and something about their expressions is hilarious to me. I keep coming back to this picture when I need a good laugh. They just look so disturbed, haha.

…and then Milo decides that whatever sound I’m making is funny enough to warrant a small half-smile.

We open some junk mail + some real mail. Dayton practiced scooting around. Will crawl for toothbrush!

Go baby D!! Milo was cheering him on too and genuinely seemed to want him to be able to reach that toothbrush. So sweet watching the Milo start to interact with his baby brother.

Breakfast time! Oatmeal + apples for baby D.

And yogurt for Milo. He would eat 12 of these yogurt pouches each day if I let him.

And then we’re heading upstairs to go play, but WAIT! GARBAGE TRUCK! Austin has a pretty good city-wide compost system, which means there are THREE trucks that come by on trash day: compost, recycle, and trash. The first one stops by and the morning, and the other two come later in the day, so the suspense builds and builds all day long. Let me tell ya: it is an absolutely exhilarating day over here!

Upstairs “running.” Legit that’s what we do each day. We just run. “Mommy, want to run?!” he asks me, as if it’s the most exciting, novel idea!

Run where, you might ask? Nowhere in particular. Just running for the sake of running. Foxy and Lamb are two key characters in his world right now, so he asked me to hold them while we’re running.

Dayton boy got an outfit change and a diaper change and then got a few wiggles out while we were running.

Huuuuugs! (“Big hug or little hug?” Milo asked me. And I told him to give Dayton a little hug, which resulted in this sort of downward dog/full body tackle sort of a hug. Little siblings are made of tough stuff.)

Dayton is absolutely obsessed with his big brother!

9:30 am: Dayton went down for his morning nap while Milo and I played for a little while.

And then a little later our nanny arrived and I started my work day!

I made another half cup of coffee and got a poppyseed scone out of the pantry (my mother-in-law made these and brought over a bunch of them!)

Ok, so for the next few hours I worked at my desk. And I don’t really have any interesting photos to share with you because I’m in the zone and my phone is turned off when I’m in work mode.

I have to take breaks every few hours to breastfeed Dayton, so that’s typically when I’ll stand up, get something to eat, stretch my legs, and then return to my desk. As anyone in the creative self-employed space will tell you, there’s an endless list of potential tasks to accomplish each day. And as any working parent will tell you, there’s a finite amount of time before childcare hours end. So I try to go into each day with a pretty clear expectation of what I will accomplish that day. It’s always a combo of writing copy, editing photos, emailing brands, reviewing contracts, brainstorming ideas, social media, and back-end web development. I get out of my job whatever I put into it, so it’s really tempting to want to work and work and work (I love working! I love structure and discipline and I looooove seeing results!), but I also want to spend time with my babies. So I try to remember that these years with babies are fleeting, and I still have decades and decades left of life to work. Some day my house will be empty and I’ll be able to work as many hours each day as I please, and so I really try to have a definite end time for each day right now.

I feel so lucky that I’m able to do my job at home and have Dayton nearby so I can continue breastfeeding! I feed him 5X per day right now.

I was trying to snap a selfie with him, and he looked over and saw him reflection in the mirror…

…and then he started grinning at himself.

Hi, little love!

5 pm: outfit change! I headed downtown for a media visit to a new rooftop restaurant.

Helllooooo Austin! I love our beautiful skyline.

This was such a fun dinner! I drank a cocktail and tried a bunch of menu items and enjoyed a slow, leisurely meal with my friend.

So much fun.

Back home by about 8:30 pm. The babies were already in bed. I had left a bottle for Dayton to eat at 7 pm, so I had to pump when I got back home.

Ok, so I really do try to unplug in the evenings and not do work late at night, but I had a couple deadlines to finish up on this particular night. Nate did too (it was a busy week for both of us!) and since he was working and we weren’t able to hang out and watch a show together, I decided to finish up my final hour of work for the day on the couch while watching Inventing Anna. (Gahhh that show, y’all! Have you watched it?)

And then by about 10:00 pm I was in bed fast asleep!

So that’s a day in the “work day” life! Tomorrow I’ll share a typical stay-at-home day with my two babies when I don’t have any childcare. The two days are quite different…

Here are other day in the life posts I’ve shared in previous years, if you’d like to see:

A Day In The Life {Summer 2018}

A Day In The Life {Winter 2019}

A Day In The Life {Pregnant With Milo}

A Day In The Life {Toddler Edition}

Have a great day! Xx.