Efficiency

Being a mama of two (and hopefully, one day a few more) means craziness when trying to leave to go somewhere at a certain time. But I have come up with a surefire way - most of the time - of getting out of the house and to our destination on time.

It all starts the night before. When I get the kids ready for bed, I lay out a pair of clothes for each of them with a diaper and shoes. This eliminates the frustration of finding a clean outfit for them and makes it easy to get them dressed from head to toe the next day. I also pack the diaper bag and set out anything extra we need to take with us (snacks, pack'n'play, etc...). If I can I load them into the car so it is one less thing that I have to do the next day. Since it is cold right now, I lay our coats, hats and mittens by the door just so I don't have to scramble to find them.

Then comes the important part - set my alarm a half-hour earlier than I normally would. WHAT?!? Yep, getting up early in the morning allows me to get myself ready and have a quiet time before the chaos begins. Most days I get up before everyone, just because I like the peace and quiet and can really focus and not enter the day in stress.

If Eden and Coop aren't up an hour before we are going somewhere I get them up. I get Eden dressed first and get her breakfast and then get Cooper ready and nurse him. Once all of this is done, we hopefully have not had any catastrophes (I do allow time for that as well). Then 10 minutes before go time we get our coats on and get in the car and off we go!

The funniest part of all of this is that on the weekend none of these things seem to work. You might think that with an extra pair of hands this wouldn't be the case but it's not. It might be that there is one more person to get ready who takes their sweet time ****cough, Garrett, cough****. Or the fact that Eden likes to play with daddy or that daddy likes to read lots of books before breakfast. The list goes on.

But this is how we efficiently get ready and get out of the house!