Our Morning Routine – No Frills, Plenty of Spills, Plus a Dash of Shouting!

Have you ever sat down and watched those YouTube videos that are solely dedicated to a morning routine? I have and do you know how they made me feel? Well, quite frankly like shit! Sorry, but if people are truly getting up 2 hours before their kids, doing yoga, reading a book, having a bath, applying their makeup to a professional level and whipping up a healthy, nutritional breakfast for the children, then well done, I honestly don’t know how you do it AND keep it up… Being a parent myself for the last 5 years and knowing how utterly exhausting it is, I am not completely sure I believe a word of it! 

Anyway, for the normal people amongst us, I thought I would share what really goes on in our house first thing in the morning and let you enjoy the fact that most of us do rush and panic as well as shout (they really do, you know, I can hear my neighbours and I’m sure they can hear me!)

Ok, so everybody wakes up at 6am, feeling refreshed and looking forward to the day ahead…

Oh, no sorry, wrong version. This is real life:

So, depending on who woke up in the night and how many times they did, will depend on who wakes first and how grumpy I am!

The usual day goes… Jake is the first one up in the hope that it is the weekend and he can jump all over Daddy until he gets up to play. Unfortunately, on a school day, he is left very disappointed. So instead of being nice and quiet, he will talk really loudly or walk around like an elephant which wakes his baby brother who is on the next floor up.

Once the little one is awake his first port of call will be milk and that’s still my department. This can take a bit of time because once he’s finished on one he will probably go to the other until I have to physically pull him off so I can actually get some jobs done!

Getting Up

Once up, I throw on my dressing gown, fluffy socks (and yes I look a state!) And I head downstairs with the boys whilst Rob walks the dog.

I change William’s nappy, clean him all up and pop the reusable bits in our nappy bin. If this is full I will put this on a rinse cycle straight away to stay on top of washing. This is the only area where I am quite organised in the morning.

Breakfast

Jake will then be demanding his toast because he’s starrrrrving!

As I attempt to put some bread into the toaster, William will be hanging off my leg saying ‘Mama, mama, mama‘ repeatedly because he wants picking up. I pick him up, only to find that I still have not mastered the task of buttering toast with one hand so I pop him down only for him to scream at me for doing so!

I make Jake’s toast as fast as I can because he’s already been out asking where it is.

As if it is my fault how slow a toaster works!

Once it is (finally) done, I take it into his lordship in the front room because ya know, it’s not a morning without CBeebies blaring out! I forget the water. I always forget the water. Baby brain!!

I head back to the kitchen grabbing the whinging William as I do because the noise is getting to me. I then return to hand it to the firstborn and then go back again to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and finish buttering my toast which I will share with the baby.

I go back to the front room to eat brekkie with them both. The boys watch CBeebies and I will sit and scroll through Facebook. (Yes you perfect parents I do and I’m not ashamed to say so!)

I always have one eye on the TV because once whiney Bing has had his slots, I know it is getting towards the time to get ready. I know to worry if Go Jetters come on and panic if I hear The Octonauts!

Showering

I then go upstairs with William to have my shower and he will happily play in the en-suite. When I say play, I mean he empties every drawer of every product/tampon/bag/creams etc and throws them in the bottom of the shower as he can open the door. As soon as I step out of it, he steps in. And no, he doesn’t care if he is fully clothed or not!

I’ve given up with the battle and just let him on get on with it. It’s the easiest answer and means I can get us all ready in the morning in (almost) time.

Everyone Get Dressed!!

I then attempt to get dressed whilst keeping my eagle eye on what William is doing. He always finds a lot of interest in my magic eye book (do you remember those?!) So that tends to keep him quiet and in one place which means I can then turn my attention to Jake. And when I say turn my attention I mean calmly ask him to come upstairs and brush his teeth approximately 7 times and gradually get louder with each request… This ends the same way every day; with me shouting the house down and him finally coming up. He thinks this is a fun game but wind the Mummy up doesn’t go down well with me first thing in the morning!

So, Jake finally brushes his teeth, tries to persuade me that he’s washed his face (he never has) and starts to get himself dressed which leaves me free to finish drying my hair and then wrestle the crazy toddler to the floor in order to get him changed too. By this point, he has usually pooed which means I have to change his nappy yet again.

However, there is a problem with the dressing. Jake thinks that when I say get dressed and do it quickly that I actually mean to do it all in super slow motion. It’s painful. I repeatedly say please do it quickly and then chase him up with faster, just put your trousers on, stop swinging them around, put your socks on your feet and not on your brothers ears, do it quickly, please, we will be late, yet all of this means zilch, nada, nothing to him. And the end result? Shouting, lots of shouting! Yet, in Jake’s case, this is what works. I wish it didn’t, I wish I could be all zen but I doubt that ever will be the case!

As I am quickly applying a touch of makeup to cover up my bags, spots and dull skin, William is usually destroying Jake’s room by pulling all of his books off his bookshelf… I’ve learned to let him and to just suck it up because it’s easier than wasting more time trying to stop him.

Get Ya Shoes On!!

Once we are all done we race down the stairs and I scream ‘get your shoes on‘ 4 times, ‘turn the telly off‘ 3 times for it to be ignored and ‘arghhh we are going to be so late’ over and over again.

I then realise I haven’t scribbled in the homework diary or got his bottle of water ready so as I quickly do this the boys finally assemble in the hallway and Jake grabs everything he needs.

Getting Out The Door

I’m then shouting ‘have you got anything?‘ ‘What have we forgotten?‘ ‘Are you sure we have it all?‘ Before taking a quick glance around and opening the front door. I bustle everyone into the car and curse the fact that I need to de-ice it. By this point, we have approximately 5 minutes to get up to the school, park and get to the school door. This involves cursing the traffic which has been dire just recently, shouting at people to just hurry up and park and finding a spot for us. Then loudly announcing ‘we are here, grab your stuff, get out the car’. This apparently means sit very quietly and act as though you can hear nothing… sigh.

Once out, we decide to do our morning jog to the school gates and then casually walk in acting as though the morning has gone nice and smoothly and I kinda have all my shit together. Not sure if anyone falls for that one.

I go home and make a cuppa, open the biccies and breathe!

And there you have it, what I believe to be the regular Mum’s morning routine and school run.

I don’t think I’ll ever learn and I reckon most of you nodded along to certain parts of this, didn’t you?!

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