Productivity

Moms Getting Through the Day – Digging Deep

April 10, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

This is the fifth post in this series, the first is here, second is here, third is here, fourth here .

OK, I have to admit that today I had to search to come up with something that helped me get through the day. It wasn’t a bad day, there just wasn’t anything that stuck out. I mean, the girls didn’t do great getting ready this morning. My husband had to carry Ivy out to the car and she was wearing only a leotard, which is not exactly appropriate clothing for school.

I had to put pants on her at school and she had to put her socks and shoes on. Emma changed her pants at school too because she didn’t like the ones she was wearing. But drop-off went good. Once we got the clothes situation worked out they kissed me goodbye and didn’t ask me to stick around.

Work went by fast because I had 3 interviews today, at 9, 11 and 1. I’m helping do first round interviews for another team. I thought it would be good to get some more interview experience. It’s been 5 years since I interviewed anyone, but I didn’t realize how much time it would take up when I offered to do it. It wasn’t bad. I mean, I like it when the day goes by fast, but there wasn’t much time for me to focus on any of my own work.

Tonight was bath night and my night to put the girls to bed. They played nicely after dinner. They “decorated” the living room with cupcake liners and then wanted me to find them all, which was kind of messy but it was fun.

We tried not using the monitor tonight but then of course the girls came upstairs. Emma needed saline because she was stuffy…That meant Ivy needed it too. Which of course was just an excuse for Ivy to come upstairs yet again. She actually came upstairs twice during bedtime. They called out later that Ivy had to go potty and she “couldn’t” do it herself (which we know not to be true), but my husband went down and dealt with it and they didn’t make much noise after that.

So, in the spirit of the exercise, I’ll pick a few things that helped me get through the day.

Moms Getting Through the Day – Daycare Drop-off and Alone Time

April 9, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

This is the fourth post in this series, the first is here, second is here, third is here.

It’s Monday today. I wrote the last post when I was at work today. As I write this it’s 9:30 at night, which is my bedtime, but I’ve spent the last 30 minutes scrolling through Facebook, so here we are. I’ll just have to make it quick.

Easy daycare drop-off this morning was amazing!

The big girls slept in this morning because they took forever to go to sleep last night. I told my husband he and the baby should just go because they were ready and we were far from it. I mean, I was ready, the girls weren’t.

It felt like they were taking forever to actually get out the door this morning. Of course once we got into the car, Ivy had a meltdown because she wanted her blanket. It was in the backpack she was wearing while strapped into her carseat. I said no. She cried about it for a minute but then stopped.

I told the girls when we were leaving the garage that it was 33 minutes later than I wanted to leave the house. I’m not sure if they understood that we were later than usual, but I had the easiest and fastest daycare drop-off this morning. It was awesome. [Read more…] about Moms Getting Through the Day – Daycare Drop-off and Alone Time

Moms Getting Through the Day – Weekend Edition

April 9, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

This is the third post in this series, the first is here and the second is here.

As I write this it’s Monday. I’m already at the office, but I haven’t accomplished much here this morning. We got a slow start this morning because the girls took forever to go to sleep and then slept in this morning.

Why is it that they sleep later on weekdays than they ever do on weekends?!?

Last night I was thinking about what I was going to write. I’ve been sending myself voice notes so I remember what works for me throughout the day. You could even say that’s something that’s helping me get through the day right now. I just say “OK Google, record voice note” and it turns it into writing and sends me an email. It’s an easy way to send yourself a reminder. But what I really wanted to say is that thinking about what’s working for me each day and helping me make it through the day feels almost like a gratitude practice.

I saw Shawn Achor speak in Chicago last September. I hadn’t heard of him before the conference. I was really excited to see Gretchen Rubin speak there, but didn’t really have any expectations of Shawn. He is a researcher devoted to studying happiness. He is also an amazing public speaker. He talked about small practices you can do to increase your happiness, one of which was a gratitude practice. You’re supposed to think about specific things that you’re grateful for and remember the details. When you do this, you remember the good stuff. (That’s not the idea verbatim, but you get the point.) [Read more…] about Moms Getting Through the Day – Weekend Edition

Epic Freezer Cooking Fail

April 7, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

When I was pregnant with my third I thought I was going to be all prepared and have some meals in the freezer so my husband would have some dinners he didn’t have to think about. You know, because he would be taking care of me and our other two kids. I thought I’d do a little something to make things easier for when we brought her home.

I hadn’t done any freezer meals for my first two, and I don’t usually do any for my regular cooking. I’m just not that good at using what’s in the freezer. I forget about it. I usually buy as much protein/veg as we need for a week and that’s how I cook. But it seemed like everyone else swears by freezer meals as a lifesaver when you have a newborn, so I thought I needed to do the same thing.

It was an epic fail!

It took forever to even come up with recipes.

I was sitting at work googling freezer recipes. It seemed like all the recipes I found were for things that you cooked and then put in the freezer. So basically just recipes that freeze well. I spent all kinds of time searching and didn’t really find any recipes that didn’t require cooking.

So after wasting all kinds of time googling freezer recipes, I had a pretty good idea of what would come up when I searched and I knew a few things had caught my eye. I decided to try three recipes.

Then I spent a bunch of time getting the recipes and the ingredient lists together.

I had some elaborate sheet of paper where I wrote everything down. I had the three different recipes and all the ingredients, but I put all of that “together” to figure out how much I needed of everything because there was some crossover in the ingredients. The list itself probably took an hour.

I had already spent hours and I hadn’t even bought any ingredients!

Moms Getting Through the Day – Morning Commute and Humor

April 6, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

This is the second post in this series, the first is here.

Let’s talk about the morning commute. I should have written about this yesterday because I forgot my pump stuff and didn’t realize until I was walking up the stairs to the office. I had to go back home and then drive back to work again, so I basically did 3x my normal commute. But, I thought about it today.

What made the commute tolerable?

Listening to podcasts!

This is a new thing for me. I drive an older car (seriously, it’s a 2007 or 2008, how is that an old car?!?) so it doesn’t have bluetooth. My husband got me a bluetooth speaker for Christmas. I think he got it so I could make hands-free phone calls, but that’s not what I use it for. I use it to listen to podcasts.

I love listening to podcasts on the way to work because they make the drive go by so fast. I’m not worried about traffic or how long it’s taking, I’m just listening to an interesting conversation. I do it on my morning commute but usually not in the evening because by the time I’m leaving work, I either want to enjoy some music or have a few minutes of quiet. Sometimes I just need some quiet. I can’t listen to podcasts while I work because I can’t do both at the same time.

Also, because I’m old-school and I have Project Fi wireless service, I don’t like to stream while I’m driving, so I download them to my phone. I could make things easier for myself by using an app and subscribing to the podcasts I like. But, like I said, I’m new to this and only have a few podcasts on rotation. That’s my excuse.

So what podcasts am I listening to?

Moms Getting Through the Day – Dinner and Bedtime

April 5, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

I’m really paying attention to what makes my days easier because I want to share that with you. So, I’m going to tell you what I’m doing to make it through the day.

We had an early start today. The baby started waking up at 4:30 this morning. We let her cry for a little while and she quieted down. When we were finally back asleep, she started crying again. Eventually she quieted back down. When it started up again at 5:30, we figured it was time to get up.

So how did I make it through dinner today? The crockpot.

Working Moms Getting Through the Day - Crockpot - Just Getting Things Done

I know, everyone else is all about the Instant Pot and here I am still using the crockpot, but that’s what I know. I don’t do recipes in the crockpot, I just take my protein and a veg philosophy and let the crockpot do the cooking. I don’t brown the meat or anything either. Who does that?!

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