Day in the Life: 6 1/2 Years Old and 4 Years Old

We are in the swing of summer things and are really enjoying these warm-weathered days! It is even supposed to hit 97 degrees next week and though I’m not exactly wild about that, I am enjoying the long days, the sunshine, and cooling off in the water. Our days are falling into a nice rhythm with the girls more independent at ages 6 1/2 and 4 years old, and this summer feels more relaxed. Here’s a peek into our Thursday!

5:00 AM: I woke up and threw on my gym clothes. David didn’t have to leave at his normal time, so I got the treat of going to the 5:30 AM Burn Boot Camp, which is only 30 minutes later than the 5:00 AM but feels like a world of difference. It was cardio day (which included HILL SPRINTS) so once back I home, I bee lined straight to the shower.

7:00 AM: All cleaned up, I made myself breakfast- avocado on homemade sourdough with lemon juice, salt, and red pepper flakes. I’m convinced it’s the best breakfast in the world. I also made a cup of green tea and sipped on it solo for a few minutes until qround 7:30/7:45 when Kaitlyn and Hailey wandered into the kitchen within 15 minutes of each other, hungry and ready to eat.

8:00 AM: After we ate breakfast, we did the whole swim practice ritual. They brushed their teeth, I slathered them in sunscreen, they put on suits, then they insisted on doing their own face sunscreen. We headed outside to check on the garden after the previous night’s torrential downpour. We don’t really know what we are doing in the garden, but checking on it each day is one of our favorite things about summer, especially now that the cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen!

8:45 AM: We came back inside and the girls washed their backyard bounty, then we were on our way to social hour. Ahem, swim team, I meant swim team. I love swim mornings because so many of my friends also have kids on the swim team, so we all get to sit and chat while the kids splash around.

Oh, did I mention that I finally bought a pair of Birkenstocks? After some serious crowd sourcing on Instagram, I bought the Mayari style in “stone” and have quickly fallen in love with them! The majority of Birkenstock lovers said to go with the original over the soft sole because after a couple weeks of breaking them in, they are the most comfortable shoe ever. Also, word on the street is the soft sole variety falls apart more quickly. I am just excited because I finally have support for my feet that my Old Navy $5 flip flops just weren’t providing.

11:00 AM: It was a hot morning and since both girls weren’t really wanting to stay and swim longer, we headed home and into the bath. They had been playing in the sand nearby the pool and figured a good rinse was probably a good idea.

After they got cleaned up, we popped popcorn and headed to the playroom for a little schooling. We’ve been back in the swing of school for almost two weeks now. It’s really going well! We are not doing a full load by any means, but have been spending about 1-1.5 hours a day doing math and language arts. I bought The Good and The Beautiful curriculum for both girls and we are finishing up Math-U-See. I just bought Singapore math to see if we want to make that switch for Hailey. I am having the hardest time deciding on math curriculum!

12:45 PM: The girls dominated the popcorn, but I was hungry! I left them building with Magna-Tiles (which are still a big hit around here and the girls actually want more so they can build bigger castles). I started the sourdough process for two new loaves while I sauteed the squash (FROM THE GARDEN!) with zucchini, onions, leftover quinoa, and beans.

The girls came down while I was cooking and asked for food, too. Between thinking they had been full on popcorn and not having much lunch food around anyway, I decided they could have cookies for lunch, which instantly propelled me to rockstar mom status.

PS- check out all that Aveeno swag that showed up as a surprise on my doorstep; I can’t wait to try out so many of the new-to-me products!

1:30 PM: We hopped in the car to go to the library, to Target, and to take care of other various errands. My squash didn’t stay with me for long, so by the time we got home a couple hours later, I was hungry! I snacked on some lentil crackers and Kite Hill jalapeno cream cheese (their cream cheese is the BEST), then I may or may not have crashed into the couch and fallen asleep for about 20 minutes… until the girls found Kaitlyn’s half-inflated Mylar balloon from her birthday and went to town. Man, that thing is obnoxious yet somehow we “misplaced” it since the nap-waking incident and it’s nowhere to be found… curious.

4:00 PM: The natives were getting restless so I pulled out our nature journals for the first time and the girls freaked. Related side note: Hailey calls herself Nature Girl, a made up super hero that can conquer anything with the help of… you guessed it… nature.

I bought the nature journals from The Good and The Beautiful. They are broken into seasons, and though technically we are still 6 days away from official summer, we threw caution to the wind and started our summer section. It walked us through fun sights and sounds of summer then asked the girls to draw their favorite site of summer which was “butterflies.” For both of them apparently. After drawing butterflies we decided to go find one to take a picture of (this is Kaitlyn’s camera), which led us on a 25 minute tour of our neighbors’ backyard where we saw exactly zero butterflies. We’ll try again in 6 days.

5:00 PM: I knew David had a late night, so the girls and I tackled dinner a little early. Our trusty bread machine made the dough, and we got to work on making individual pizzas. My power nap must have served me well because we went all out. The girls rolled out their own dough, poked the holes, topped it however they wanted, and had a ball. I pretended I didn’t see that my wood floors had turned a solid shade of white and joined in on the chaos.

6:00 PM: We ate our pizzas while I read two chapters of Matilda. Honestly, I picked the book because I want to watch the movie with Hailey and I have this odd need to always read the book with her first (though I have no such rule for myself, as I saw ALL the Harry Potters before reading a single one). It has words I don’t like (stupid- cringe) and is a little darker than I remembered, but Hailey is super into it. Kaitlyn is tolerating it well enough and enjoys it mainly for how animated I get while reading it (I’m talking funny voices, acting out parts, etc… anything to try and keep her engaged too).

7:00 PM: We worked through the regular bedtime routine: go potty, put on pajamas, brush teeth, throw the toothpaste tube at your sister… oh wait, that last part was just Kaitlyn, which resulted in her missing the first bedtime book, which resulted in crocodile tears. What kind of mom takes away books as a consequence? ME. Luckily all was forgiven once I carried her to bed on my back like a horse.

7:30 PM: With both girls asleep (well, just Kaitlyn- Hailey usually stays up reading until 8:00ish), I went to clean up the rest of the kitchen. Then I was walking to the office to load all the pictures for this post onto my computer when I saw this:

Apparently Kaitlyn wasn’t satisfied with us not seeing a butterfly on our adventure walk and decided to take matters into her own hands. Golly, I love these girls.

More Day-In-Life Posts:

6 Weeks Old

14 Months Old

2 Years Old (25 months)

2 Years Old (and me, 5 months pregnant)

2 1/2 Years Old and 6 Weeks Old

3 Years Old and 6 Months Old

3 Years Old and 7 Months Old

3 1/2 Years Old and 12 Months Old

4 Years Old and 17 Months Old

4 Years Old and 20 Months Old

4 Years Old and 2 Years Old