This day just goes on to show that a) How I start my day has a major impact on the rest of the day, and b) I am so much SANER after just one day of my husband being at home.
I thought I was making a big deal when I told him it’s important the he be there in the first few hours of the day so that I can get most of the kitchen work done, but IT IS a big deal, because look how this day turned out. After just one day in the company of another adult, I was ready to tackle Monday like it was no one’s business, and tackle I did.
I woke up before everyone else, which, honestly, is THE SECRET to having a productive day. You see, your mood has a lot to do with it, and if you’re the first person to wake up, the chances of someone annoying you first thing in the morning are pretty, pretty slim, even if that someone is someone you love (because more often than not, they’re the ones who annoy us THE MOST).
When my husband woke up 20 minutes later, I was already having coffee, and by the time Laddoo woke up, another 40 minutes later, I was on item 2 of my to-do list. I finished some more stuff before they both went downstairs and the secret to getting that done is DON’T GET INVOLVED. HE gave her milk, HE got her dressed, and HE took her downstairs, while I worked.
While they were downstairs, I got started on making lunch and here’s another secret: DO NOT FAFF AROUND. By the time they came back upstairs, lunch was ready, including chapatis for Sandeep’s dabba and an extra parantha for Laddoo’s breakfast. The significant increase in productivity may also have been because I was listening to music on Spotify and not watching a show, so my hands and eyes focussed on cooking and not on the screen.
Considering that a major portion of the cooking bit was done already, I had to do minimal work before meal times and I could focus on other things for the rest of the day.
Yesterday was a social media heavy day for me because two posts were planned for LORM and one here. One of the LORM posts, the winner announcement, required posting a comment every hour. I tackled that by preparing the comments and whatsapp-ing them to myself as individual messages along with the time I was supposed to post them. And I set an hourly timer to ring one minute before the hour and I am proud to say that NOT A SINGLE COMMENT was posted even a minute late.
The captions and pictures for the other LORM post and my post here were ready before hand so all I had to do was hit “publish.”
This meant that I could spend the rest of the day, phone-free (except for exactly one minute every hour) focussing on Laddoo. We got around to playing with her toys and I played WITH HER. Laddoo has been having fun playing with the 10 piece-rainbow stacker from @chitrani.official that her Mhanta and Mhave got for her as a gift, and I love playing with it just as much. So much that we invented games to play. More on this later, definitely.
I had a baby-free bath yesterday, and no, it wasn’t while she was asleep. I asked her to play with her Dinosaur puzzle and even though that only took her fewer than 10 minutes to complete, I had at least that long.
But the most important parts of the day for me were:
- We stepped out in the evening. She goes out in the morning with her dad, but I haven’t been able to take her downstairs for many weeks now. We were out for just around 45 minutes because it was so damn hot and there was no wind at all which is pretty ironic considering how hard it rained just a couple of hours later AND that cyclonic winds are predicted over the next 48 hours, but whatever.
- And this is my favourite; we managed to stay without TV until 6:40 PM. She asked for it once or twice during the day, but I distracted her. I turned it on only once we were back upstairs because I needed her to wait until I made fresh chapatis. She was pretty hungry and would’ve asked for or eaten other stuff had I made her wait. And what was 45 minutes of TV at the end of the day, huh?
- It seems like I finally got through to her with the whole safe and unsafe touch conversation. More on this later.
After dinner and a good bath, we were off to bed and read ‘Cave Baby’ and ‘The Gruffalo,’ and just as I was finishing the second book, I thought I saw a flash of light behind the drawn curtains. Then I heard some sounds. It was lightning and thunder. I quickly rushed outside to rescue our clothes from the balcony and thankfully it hadn’t started raining until then, and of course, Laddoo followed me, got a glimpse of the lightning and was in awe.
“Kaun hai woh noise?” she asked me when she heard thunder. And I told her what it was.
It was a little past 9 PM by the time she finally closed her eyes and I got a breather, but not yet, I had another post to do on LORM. But after that was done, when I sat back and reflected on the day, I realised that it was probably the most productive day I’d had as I could strike 8 items (out of 12) off my to-do list.
And here’s the irony of my life. My husband didn’t come home until 2 AM. As I write this, it is already 8:27 AM on June 11 (5:24 PM, and I’m still editing), and he’s woken up late, they’ve gone downstairs late, I have barely started cooking and I wonder how I’ll be able to manage to do all that I have planned for today.
If I had written this on Monday night, I’d be worried about jinxing my perfect day by putting it out there. But on Tuesday, after my husband came home 2+ hours after I’d fallen asleep, and spent barely 30 minutes with Laddoo outside, I know there’s no way I can jinx it further.
So for the first time, you read some gyaan from me – the woman who was amazingly productive for ONE DAY, and is telling you how you can do it too. Hopefully for more than just one day.
Being Mamma Bear 