“Beep! Beep! Beep!”
Silence. “Beep! Beep! Beep!”
Groaning, sighing, then stumbling, running, bathroom door slamming. My boys don’t always like to get up in the mornings. I finally got D1 an alarm clock because my 30-minute wake-ups with him were getting OLD. Yes, it can take him that long to just wake up. With the alarm clock, for some reason, he does tend to get up much faster. Probably because it’s electronic… it’s a guy thing.

So the rest of a typical day goes something like this:
6:30 Mom gets up & dressed. I get my breakfast & devotions in before the boys show up for breakfast.
7:00 The boys’ alarm goes off. Usually D1 hits the snooze button once. Not always, but usually. D2 usually gets up the first time it goes off.
IDEALLY
7:30ish The boys SHOULD be eating breakfast now. Hopefully they are both dressed. They make their beds after breakfast, if they haven’t done it yet.

COMMON REALITY
7:09 D1 gets up and comes up for breakfast. I send him back to his room to get dressed.
7:11 He shows up in the living room, in his jammies. I remind him that he needs to eat breakfast and to choose cereal, not video games. He pours some cereal. (Mom forgets she sent him back to get dressed.)
7:13 He runs to see what he can hear on TV in the living room. It’s the news. I send him back to his seat, again.
7:14 He is watching D2 eat. I ask him to put the milk in the bowl.
7:15 I notice he’s forgotten his glasses, and I send him to get them. He returns right away, for a change.
7:16 He gets up to let the dog out, even though she isn’t at the door, but he is trying to get her to come to the door. I send him back to his seat.
7:17 He finally takes a bite of cereal, then leaves to make toast.
7:19 I find the peanut butter toast mess on the counter and clean it up. He is happily munching pb toast.
7:20 He follows me upstairs to see what I’m doing in the laundry room. Uh, laundry?
7:21 I send him BACK to EAT his breakfast.
7:29 He is finally done and heads to his room to get dressed, which he forgot to do first thing when he got up.
7:35 It is quiet but I hear a knocking or pinging noise. I go to their room to check on the boys, to find D2 has made his bed, is dressed–including shoes, and is playing air hockey with D1… who is wearing only underwear and socks.
(OK this goes on for a while… you can see that my wonderful, sweet, special needs son can present some challenges. Suffice it to say that the morning routine could use some better structure, ahem, and maybe a coach?) LOL
NOTE: Just FYI, D1 just turned 9 and D2 is 7.

YEP THAT’S REALITY– Our routine really is get up, dressed, eat, and leave. It’s the ten million steps in between that make me want to hide in the bathroom with a big thick book to read.
8:00ish We go for a walk. Some days we don’t get out the door until 8:30 or 8:45, and you can tell why! We have several different routes we take, and we usually take the dog. Some days we walk longer than others. D1 actually rides his bike, and D2 walks/runs with me. He hasn’t figured out the balance thing yet, and even with training wheels he isn’t comfortable riding a bike. So he jogs. Sometimes I do, too.
9:00 Start school with Bible. We sit on the couch and read a Bible story. We go over our memory work for the day. Currently we are working on memorizing James 1. Yes, the whole chapter. We have the first five verses done.
9:20 Math for D1, Handwriting for D2
9:40 Spelling for D2, Handwriting for D1 (he actually does it for 10 min but it takes 20 to get 10 min of work from him.)
10:00 Math for D2, Spelling for D1
10:20 break for the mini trampoline or SOMETHING active
10:30 History reading, poss. narration & timeline
10:50 Nature reading, narration
11:15 The boys take turns reading to me.
11:45 LUNCH
12:30 Science or history, or projects
2:00 DONE with school for the day
Again, this is ideal, not necessarily reality. D1 really is the key player in our schedule, in what he can handle– or not, whether he’s having an ON day– or not. We utilize the computer for spelling practice and math fact practice. It’s always a good fall-back for me if D1 is having a really hard time staying on task I can have him just practice math facts for a few minutes, to get through my one on one work with D2, and then I can focus entirely on him again. Even on a bad day we are usually done by 3:00. We use a timer, and they do school work in 10 or 20 minute increments. D1 likes the timer and tends to do better and focus better when he knows the end point is coming.

So what about you? What do you do all day?