Habit Tracking - a perfectly un-perfect day.

I've been doing some habit tracking this year (inspired by Kae). I'm tracking whether I do following things:

• Daily Planning
• Floss
• strength
• cardio
• yoga/stretch
• Ate Veg
• Ate Fruit
• Vitamins
• Meditate
• walk
• Line a Day

I'm not sure I love habit tracking, but I'm learning some things about myself.  

I don't eat fruit. I spend so much time chopping and preparing and serving fruit to the kids and then I will go days without eating fruit. I like fruit!  Perhaps I need to start eating fruit whenever I make fruit for the kids.  I think the problem with fruit is that it doesn't seem to fill any real need - I love strawberries but how many strawberries should I eat and why?  I'm not going to reach for strawberries if I'm hungry.  And I usually don't eat when I'm not hungry.  Maybe 3pm needs to be "Rachel eats fruit" time, because eating fruit is good and I guess there's no good reason to wait until I'm hungry to eat fruit?

I also don't really meditate or floss.  I floss more than I meditate though! But I feel like there's benefit in tracking the things I don't do, so I can tell when I do start to incorporate them or for how long.  Sometimes I floss for like two weeks straight... then I just don't.

Yesterday - Saturday the 14th - was my first ZERO Habit day. 

I had a dinner with friends on Friday which kept me out to 11pm (unheard of for me!) so did not get up early (ie before 6am which is the cutoff for kid/toddler wake ups) for exercise of any sort.  I did not plan my day before it started.  I did not eat any fruit or any veg all day (this was a big mistake, I was ravenous by the time we had dinner, which was macaroni and cheese, and I ate 3 bowls of it,.. although it have peas in it so maybe I did have veg?) I ate a bagel for breakfast, a cliff bar at 3pm, and half a scone for lunch because apparently moms eat like college students.

I did not take vitamins and I certainly didn't meditate.  I did go for a walk carrying Clara and chatted with some neighbours but it was a 1/4 mile walk that took us 45 minutes because OMG are 19 month olds slow walkers.  I guess I could count that, but I usually try and count walks where I maintain forward momentum for more than 50% of the time.

I usually do my line a day in the morning (because evening entries say "I ate x for dinner I am tired" and morning ones are slightly more rounded reviews).  I did not do the line a day yesterday.

This was my first ZERO Habit day of 2025.  It wasn't the worst day, but it certainly wasn't the best.  

Also, as a 40 year old human, I really need to be eating some fruit and vegetables if I'm going to eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese for dinner.  Habits are here to support good decisions... Macaroni and Cheese is always a good decision but needs some supportive habits to not feel like a bloat monster after.

I'm sure I'll learn something bigger and better from a year of habit tracking than "fruit and vegetables are good".... but apparently I'm not there yet.

Do you track habits? Do you eat fruit? Can you eat three bowls of macaroni and cheese?

Saturday in the Life

This weekend is totally not normal so let's do a day in the life!

5:00am - Wake up, think about getting up, fall back asleep

6:30am - Wake up again. Toddlers are shouting from next door.  Andy says he will get them up if I sort breakfast.  Sorting breakfast means I can make coffee so this sounds good

7:00am - Breakfast for all. It's peanut butter on toast.

7:30am - Get toddlers dressed

8:00am - Andy and Ezra leave for an overnight adventure(!!).  Solo parenting 75% of the kids commences.

8:15am - I take Lily, Aubrey & Clara to the store to pick up some hats I ordered and some bagels and some other random things.

I'm taking part in a research study about the mobility impacts of having twins.  Part of this study is recording things that happen in a day which make getting out harder.  Going to the supermarket is a perfect example.  I shop at a supermarket that has parent parking spaces near the door.  The hardest part of going to the store is finding a twin trolley:

I end up leaving the twins and Lily in the car while I walk around the car park looking for the twin trolly. This store usually has at least 3 but they can be hard to find - they have two red seats up front rather than one.

I see the twin trolly in the car park and collect it.

8:40am - Shopping done

We normally get grocery delivery because there isn't really room to do a family shop once you have a family in a trolly.

8:50am - Drop off groceries at home and quick toilet stop for Lily.

9:05am - drive to imagination play center for 9:15 booking.  Park in car park and pay for parking before realizing that the first 2 hours were free and I wasted £4 for parking I didn't need to pay for.  In my defense, that parking machine had a lot of words and I can't really pay attention to anything and I'm so used to paying for parking now that I just... paid.

9:15am - Imagination Play! It's raining and the twin pram does not fit through the door of the building.  So I have to get the twins out, thankfully another parent helps me get the twins in with Lily.  

Imagination play has lots of cute areas for the kids like a disco room, a pretend hairdresser, a firetruck room, and a play shop and play kitchen area.

11:00am - Leave imagination play center and head home.  Getting out becomes really tricky when I remembered I need to put the pram outside (in the rain) before I can get the twins in it

This is actually the first place I've been where my twin folding pram doesn't fit through the door - since the pram is the size of a standard wheelchair I am usually OK.  However, in older buildings it's not mandatory to have wheelchair access... but this entry is especially bad.

11:20am - Get home, serve scrambled eggs and strawberries and pitta bread for lunch.

11:50am - toddler nap time

12:00pm - Tidy downstairs, clean up lunch mess.  Take out compost, put laundry in dryer. Eat random things. Put away groceries.

12:45pm - Eat my own lunch (beans and rice and sauteed red peppers) then make a fruit salad with Lily to take to dinner

1:00pm - Read a story to Lily, almost fall asleep, make a cup of tea, start a film 

2:15pm - Toddlers awake! Remember I haven't brushed my teeth yet and do that.  Also floss.  Then get toddlers downstairs for snack (yogurt and cereal) before getting ready to leave

2:55pm - Drive to a friends house who has invited us for dinner (I did say this was crazy many times and gave her many chances to cancel!) I said we would arrive at 3. 

3:00pm - Realize I forgot the fruit salad I said I would bring, turn around and drive home

3:25pm - Arrive at friends house only 25 minutes late.  They have a 2 year old and a 4 year old (same age as Lily) and it was only mildly controlled chaos.  19 month olds are such chaos.

6:10pm - Leave friends house in total disarray after very enjoyable play date and dinner.  These are fairly new friends and I really hope that I didn't ruin this friendship by having chaos twins at their house. I can also count on one hand the number of time the twins have had dinner not at our house.  All in all it went well!

6:30pm - Arrive home, get twins changed for bed.  Bedtime for twins

7:00pm - Twins in bed, bedtime for Lily

7:30pm - Lily asleep, go downstairs to sort out the chaos of the day

7:45pm - Chaos can wait, first eat cheese on crackers.  Then get laundry from dryer, empty dishwasher, put out bag of dirty nappies, tidy and hoover downstairs.

8:15pm - That's better

8:30pm - sit down and write blog post!

And that's... a day! A day of solo parenting!  Tomorrow I don't have big plans for the morning but I'm thinking a park with a coffee shop. We've been invited to a friends house (I mean, is it "invited" if I say "OMG I have all the kids please help please can I come over?") for the afternoon, although not for dinner (because they are not crazy).  We will probably do packed lunch for dinner (ham sandwiches?) and then Andy and Ezra will be home around 9pm and I will have survived 36 hours of solo parenting 3 under 5!

I wonder if this weekend would feature in this NYT book of 36 hour weekends in European cities? 

This book is 100% for DINK couples and I 100% wanted it when we were a DINK couple.

Thursday Thoughts: Planner Debates and new planner day

Tonight turned into new planner night!

We always order planners from PersonalPlanner.com.  I love them because they're super versitible, I can change layouts every year, and I've kept a birthday list so they get printed WITH BIRTHDAYS in it that also say how old the person is (if I remember to enter a birth year).  It's great.  This is 24-25:

Last year I ordered a 13 months version, so it started in September and ends in September.

This year I decided we would go for a bigger A4 size rather than A5.  I'm excited for monster calendar... we need more writing space.  We have lots of things and lots of kids.

It's a weekly Calendar and I always do a vertical date layout.  The bottom box is for sport but we use it to plan meals.  Sometimes we use the small writing section at the bottom to add meal suggestions for future weeks. For instance, we had beans tonight and it went well, so I'll add beans to the potential dinner list in two weeks because that's about the right interval for a beans dinner.

I don't like that Saturday and Sunday share a column, but I'm hoping the A4 size will mean there is enough room for everything.

This is the cover I picked - yay! I can't wait for it to arrive.  They are sent from Sweden with free shipping (HOW???) and the company seems so cool.  I also got month tabs so I can put dividers in... a planning pro tip I did not learn for the first 5 years of ordering this planner.

The A4 size only comes in 12 months so I started it in September and it runs through August.

As I went to make the order Andy said it should start in October since our current planner already has September. 

I thought he was joking.

School starts in September.  Planners always need overlap. September (or January, or August) seems like the right time to order a new Planner.

Andy was insistent that I am the insane one because I am basically wasting a month of the old planner. 

As a counterpoint, we have things planned in September already and I feel it's a valuable use of space to have a calendar overlap.  I am happy moving these things to the new calendar.

As Andy's counterpoint, I am wasting 1/13th the price of the 13 month calendar if I just start the next calendar in September.

So, internetland, help me.  Do you do a month overlap in calendars? Would you get a 13 month calendar and move it forward every month?  Andy does have a point that every 12 years we would basically have a free calendar of single months, but also... I love a new calendar in September.  September calendars are the best.

May highlights

I feel that May just came and went with not much excitement.  

However... that is some real recency bias (where your brain weights recent things as more important than further away things)

The start of June has been grey and wet and cold.  But I was looking through photos and I realized that it was sunny in May.  Almost warm!

I was going to be super advanced and work on my photo album project tonight but instead I have decided to write a photo blog post about May.

In May we took a family trip to a local National Trust site.  Aubrey and Clara held hands! This was part of our first all day adventure (ie not being home 11-3 for naps) since 2nd January 2025.  It went OK... but I have definitely gotten used to days having a rhythm that includes a midday baby nap and general downtime.

We did a family trip to the local bike park again with all 4 kids.  It went even better when the twins found this great slide / bike jump:

Ezra rolled some bumps:

After the bike park some of our frineds came back to our house for lunch which is just about my favourite thing ever.  I wish people could come over for lunch every day.

Andy took the kids on adventures in May while doing daddy daycare. Lily knows how to dress for adventure:

We tried our first family "hike" in some nearby woods.  It went terrible since Aubrey decided she hated nature.  She is the first toddler I have ever met who hates the outdoors.  She may have found the whole experience overwhelming... but it was a lot of crying.  We will try again.

Also, Andy has decided that baby backpacks are a first parent adventure because they allow you to take babies on adventures parents like.  Now we basically exist at kid speed we may as well have walked at toddler speed and not carried backpacks at all.

In May we lost and then reunited with Bunny.  It was a happy ending all around

In May I took a cold water dipping course with my gym buddy. When I say my gym buddy is a gym person I am not joking.  Doing arm workouts with a person who has super strong arms is great for building arm strength.  

From photos it appears May was a month of outdoor adventures and family fun.  Here's hoping it stops raining so June can have some fun adventures as well.

What was your best May adventure?  Have you ever done cold water dipping? 

Hello June!

June started with a full day of mountain biking at a local ladies day.  It was the first ladies day I've been to since September of last year.  I don't understand how I possibly went out for a full day of biking in September when the twins were 11 months old but I did... and I can already tell we are moving towards a time when one parent watching four kids is not the unthinkable mission that it has been.  

The day was great, the trails were great and I can tell I'm improving. I rode red technical trails! I did drops and teeny tiny jumps!

Mostly I was pleased that I could still do a standing forward fold on Monday and did not have to take a day off work in back pain agony like last MTB day. Yay!

Work things

We finally have four days a week of childcare again.  Yay! After this week I'm going down to 4 days a week in work and will have Fridays as childcare days.  It seems like the right balance for now.  I may be switching roles / jobs to achieve this, which would be great because the thing I like least about a 4 day workweek was the fact that I always did a 5 day job in 4 days.  Starting a new/different role on 4 days will be a lot easier to navigate than turning my 5 day a week job into 4 days.

Andy is starting a new job in June which is 5 days a week in an office.  He's been mostly WFH since January 2022 and I've been almost fully WFH since 2020 so this is a big change for us . 

Sport things

I've changed my weekly gym buddy morning to Tuesdays.  I think I like it - I used to go on Fridays.  It's nice to have my gym session done so early in the week.  And I like seeing my Gym buddy on Tuesdays when I'm more conversationally fresh rather than dragging and tired at the end of the week.

I'm hoping to schedule more Peloton into my day on Mon-Thursday, and at least one or two mornings a week as well.  However I am also aware that "hope is not a strategy" so need to think more concretely on how I'll fit exercise in.  I'll start training in July for my half marathon (in October) so this month is about laying the foundation of when I can workout, and next month is about... actually training.

Kid things

June feels like a weird in-between month because school is still in session until the 18th of July.  There are 6 weeks of school left, followed by 6 weeks of summer holidays.  The summer holidays feel short and intense, but also kind of long and forever.   Also, some summer camps still are not open for booking and that seems insane to me.

What is the weather in this photo?
Full waterproofs for Lily, jumpers for the twins, and shorts for Ezra. 

Reading things

I got the MMD Summer reading guide for inspiration and I am excited for many of the titles.  I've got a long holds list and now I just need to read.  I've read 11 books so far this year which is far under the 4 books a month I've been reading in previous years but... life is busy.  I did just finish Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe and it definitely pulled me out of my reading funk a bit.  Fun book.

I'm now reading Summer of 69 by Elin Hildebrand because it's summer reading time right?

Really super minor home improvements

This is straying far from June but it's on my mind. I finally got date labels because our leftover situation is confusing and also this should help our nanny decide what makes good kid lunches and what needs eating sooner.  Also, this is our full start-of-week fridge.  It will not be this full at the end of the week:

When we bought this house we bought new furniture for the FIRST TIME EVER and one of the things we got was the long orange footrest under the window in this photo

Our lounge set up has always felt awkward to me because we have a yellow chair which I love but also was in a super awkward place to sit.  The orange footrest couldn't be used as a footrest because the toddlers would stand on it and Clara currently has a black eye from falling off it.  Also, Clara had a super gross habit of putting her runny nose on it and it was just... gross.

Andy borrowed a steam cleaner to try and clean the orange footrest and while it was out of the room I looked a the room and realized that if I did not already own this orange footstool there is no way I would l want to add a giant orange footstool to the room:

I could have tidied for better comparison but... oh well.

We freecycled the stool to some happy person who apparently didn't mind the baby stains. It's still not my favourite room in the house but I love being able to sit on my favourite yellow chair in the window, and I love not looking at a slobber covered footstool and wishing I had a better place to put it and also that it didn't have slobber on it (which is why the yellow chair is covered with a blanket)

The Bunny Saga - an emotional rollecoaster of lost and found and missing.

I have an emotional rollercoaster of a post for you on a Friday.

This is Bunny:

Ezra got bunny in April 2021 (I think Bunny was a present for Lily, but Ezra liked her more)

Bunny has been to Sweden and back.  Bunny has been to nursery and back.

A few weeks ago, on Saturday night, Ezra asked me to get bunny. 

"Where is bunny?" I asked

"I left him at the park" said Ezra.  My heart sank.

Andy went out to the park to look for bunny.  Some parks get really weird at 8pm on a Saturday.  Bunny was nowhere to be found.

The next morning, Ezra and Andy rode to the park to look for Bunny again.  Bunny was not there. 

On the way back, they stoped at our local shop and asked if anyone had handed in bunny. "no" said the cashier, "but there was a post about a bunny on facebook yesterday."  She showed Ezra and Andy this picture:

There was bunny! Right there.  But, bunny was not in the park.  Andy and Ezra put up a missing bunny sign on the wall of the park.  Reward for return of lost bunny.

A few nights later I was doing some compulsive googling to try and see if I could get a similar bunny for a pound or two.  I happened to find that exact bunny for sale on Ebay and Vinted.  The same photos were on each ad.  There was literally one of those bunnies for sale in all of the UK.

And it has been listed 1 day after we lost bunny.  

And they were selling it for £20.

I messaged the seller, just out of curiosity on why that one stuffed bunny was so expensive.  Was it a collectors item? Did I not realize Ezra had been carrying around an expensive limited edition toy?

I got the following weird message

"Hi, I primarily sell for friends and family and this is the price at which I was asked to list this. I do not query their prices and so am unable to answer you as such. Thank you for your interest,"

Andy got back from cycling then and I showed him the message and the bunny and the lack of any other bunny for sale anywhere and the fact that it was posted for sale 24 hours after losing our bunny.  It was all too much! Had someone stolen our bunny?

I decided to buy it on ebay with a fake name and delivered to a third party address, in case this bunny thief was going to come after us.  If it was our bunny we would know from the postage - if it was sent from our town I was pretty sure this was some bunny thief and we would *not* be paying ebay for it! Thankfully ebay has a lot of buyer protection so we felt OK about the purchase.

 It was quickly posted from over 300 miles away.

Obviously it wasn't our bunny.

When it arrived it was not in good condition so I did manage to return it.  We decided it was a learning journey for everyone.  We had not told Ezra about the bunny sleuthing.  He seemed pretty much over it.  I sometimes forget that things that feel SO BIG to parents are quickly nothing to kids. 

A few weeks later - last Tuesday in fact - someone texted Andy that his dog had found bunny in the woods behind the park and he had seen the lost bunny sign.

Bunny seems to have lost her dress, and she obviously needs a wash.  BUT... it appears we might get bunny back tomorrow.  I think I'm more excited than Ezra about this (although we haven't told him, because who knows what might happen, or whether we will actually get bunny back).

That is the saga of Bunny, blogged for posterity.  I know I need better hobbies than going down internet rabbit holes(!!!) after a missing bunny. But also... it's bunny. It will be so nice to get a win.

Also, kids are no longer allowed to take precious teddies out of the house.

Saturday Update - Bunny was brought to our house by a super nice dude.  Since the missing bunny sign offered a reward we gave him some cookies and some dog treats.  Bunny has seen better days but she is now in the washing machine:

Saturday update 2

Bunny cleaned up well.  Ezra was very happy to cuddle a clean bunny and to have bunny home.  So am I.

Line a day journaling, yoga update, and also giant sandwiches.

Photo has nothing to do with post, but kids do love a shower crayon

I have a line day journal that I had filled out daily since 31st December 2020.  I feel it says a lot about my personality that I didn't start it on 1st January 2021, but instead went for 31st December.  This means that I am now in my final year of the 5 years.  On each page, above me, are 4 years of memories and I just need to fill in the 5th year.

And I am writing once every 3-4 days now.  And I am almost never reading the previous days.  There are blanks and I have almost no interest in continuing it.  Every day for the previous 4 years I would write an entry.  This year... I don't want to.

Here is the headline theme of my previous 5 years

2021: 6 month old year old and 2 year old at home during lockdown
2022: work/nursery, reemerging from covid
2023: Pregnant with twins
2024: newborn twins

I know I chose and wanted close-together kids but also reading my 5 year journal is not really nice.  Which is odd, because reading this blog which covers the same time period is sometimes nice!  And I feel like maybe it's odd that when I write a journal for me it's a bunch of complaining (I mean, it's legit complaining, but also complaining) or even worse is the entries that are *not* complaining but should be.  

For instance, April 28th 2021:

Lilly (6 months old) only woke at 10/12/3:30 & 6:30 but only had two feeds.  Yay but I'm still tired? Pubs are now opening for outdoor pre-booked drinks only, no food.

So... my curiosity at why I'm tired with that awful sleep schedule means that somehow that night of sleep was better than previous nights?  Also, I forget that the idea of buying a drink outside 14 months after covid started (4 months after vaccines) was new and exciting.  

Anyways, I am sort of excited for the next 5 year journal.  Maybe I need to do a better theme or writing prompt or something.  Also I will start it on January 1st next time rather than December 31st.

Yoga Update
As expected, my daily yoga practice finished the first day I couldn't get my daily yoga in.  Last week I got up at 5:15, got up to yoga at 5:35, and Nora woke up at 5:40am. I turned off yoga and haven't started it again.  Instead, I've been sleeping until nearly 6.  

The problem with my yoga practice (which I knew from time tracking) was that I went from averaging 7.5 hours of sleep a night to 6.5 hours of sleep a night.  Since I need more sleep than 6.5 hours I knew something was going to give. We have a guest visiting and it's half term holiday in school (in Wales schools finish for the summer in late July - very different than the US!) and so I'm spending all day with kids and evenings with guest and yoga or exercise is just not happening.  Oh well, there's always next week.

Big Family Benefits

One kind of satisfying thing about having such a big family is that food comes readily portioned for our group.  Earlier this week we packed a picnic.  Here is the sandwich I made for the kids and adults:

There was some cheese left, but not much.  Also, white bread and brie is a pretty good sandwich (we added chutney to the adult side)

Whenever we make pasta we just use a whole bag (they come in 500g bags here) so no portioning or weighing needed.

Do you do a line-a-day journal? Do you like it? Does it differ in tone and content from your blog? Would you find turning an entire baguette into a sandwich satisfying?

Hoover tales on a Sunday.

We got a new hoover.  It is a Henry.  British people love this hoover, I was skeptical but since hoovering is Andy's thing (I have a cordless thing I use most... Andy is the proper hoover-er) he did the research and thought a Henry was right.

This is a Henry:

The old hoover was £75 and the first new hoover we ever bought and £75 seemed soo expensive 10 years ago.  This hoover was not much more expensive, but I just don't get the "Henry" thing.  Why is Henry so happy? Is this a hoover than exists in the states? 

I finally decided to hoover with it since we still don't have a cleaner and my yoga practice has made me more acquainted with the amount of dirt and hair on the floor of my office.

Hoovering was going well - it is a very strong hoover and with the long cord thing I could get behind furniture etc. 

As I was spot hoovering the floor and wall I accidentally hoovered up one of my workout socks.  

side note: maybe this is why I should pick *everything* off the the floor before I start hoovering instead of thinking I will just quickly hoover around things on the floor?

Another side note: these socks are thin ankle socks that came in a pack of 5.  I have had a single sock floating around for months.  I eventually threw away the single sock and then I still have a single sock, which means I guess I threw away partner sock? So I threw away partner sock and I STILL seem to have single sock??  

After hoovering up either single or partner sock I took the other two floor socks (why did I have 3 floor socks??! what is happening, I promise I only ever wear two socks at a time) and moved them to safety across the room.  

Then I stood up, turned around while holding the hoover nozzle, and accidentally hoovered both of those socks up too.

Even though the socks were cheap and old I felt that hoovering three socks up is rather excessive so I tried to get the socks out but it's a bagged hoover and socks do not survive well in a bag of house grime for even a minute.  

Lessons Learned

• A Henry hoover is pretty good at hovering, despite looking so... odd.
• I am not good at hoovering (I knew this) 
• There is a reason one picks everything off the floor before hoovering
• We should probably find a new cleaner
• I probably need new workout socks

Have you ever hoovered up a sock? Have you seen or owned a Henry before?  What the weirdest thing you've accidentally hoovered up?

Things that are working / things that are improving (part 2)

Hello from 12 days after my last post!

I can see I posted that at 6:40am on Saturday the 10th.  I was feeling somewhat tired from my ride, but I was also excited because I had booked a swim at a reservoir about 3 miles from my house.  The kids were all coming to meet me at a cafe after my dip, so I decided to run there for a bit of extra adventure.

I ran with a camelback carrying the minimum for the dip (jumper, swimsuit, travel towel, goggles, swim cap) and my back started to feel a bit... bad.  During my ride I felt I needed to stretch my back a lot but it's been a while since I've ridden that much and even longer since I've tried to do technical riding over drops

This is a drop. This is obvs not me.

The weather was lovely, the reservoir was a balmy 15c/60f. 

I did my swim and really felt like I needed to stretch my back when I got home because it felt... bad.  I claimed an hour of Rachel time over baby nap and tried to quick fix the situation with a bunch of Yoga classes.

Unfortunately by Monday my back was so sore I booked a half day of sick leave from work because I couldn't sit down for more than 10 minutes without shooting back pain.  I was mildly worried I had actually hurt my back in a very hurt way, but the NHS assured me that slipped disks and bulging disks and all of the back things I've heard of were just a normal part of owning a back.  And mostly, that if I had hurt my back there wasn't much to do besides rest.

And do a lot of yoga.  Every day.  (this was not really medical advice)

I started getting up at 5am to do a 30 or 45 minute Peloton yoga class every morning.  It was interesting because I have never struggled with standing forward fold before, and when I started this time I physically could not do the pose at all.  Same with other poses I normally like - happy baby, thread the needle... none of it.  I did yoga in the morning and the evening and noticed how much more flexible I was by the evening every day.  

After about 10 days the pain was gone, and yesterday I had a massage which helped immensely.  I am excited at the idea of continuing yoga though.  It's a nice way to get up in the morning.  Also, the terror that I won't be able to move without yoga was stronger than my desire to not be awake at 5am.

Things I learned:

• I am much happier now being a not-in-pain person
• Yoga is a really nice way to start the day
• Core muscles are very real and useful
• Recovering from a mild injury quickly is great for feeling much better about life
• Sleeping on my back sucks and is also really good for my back
• Mountain biking is great fun and probably worth 10 days of back pain but the run probably wasn't worth it

Do you do yoga (daily or otherwise)? Do you sleep on your back?  Can you do a standing forward fold?

Saturday - Things that are working, things that are improving

I had the most wonderful day mountain biking yesterday.  It took a lot to plan and it was a lot of fun.  I have exactly one photo of me eating a post ride hot dog.

During the biking we thought of loads of FLOM (or family meetings) worthy life updates which I didn't record very well.  And by the time it was bedtime I was so tired we didn't really cover any of the things.  but the takeaway was that Andy and I are both up for more adventure and are aware this will be a slow start due to the number and ages of kids we have.

Also, I would like to take a moment for things that are working right now, since I feel I've recently started using this blog for things that are not working.

Things that are working

Having a big car.  We have a S-Max 7 seater and it is great.  It's from 2017 and is the newest car we have ever owned

Our two day a week nanny who is starting 4 days a week.  She is lovely and so good with the kids and so incredibly calm as a human.  It's great for me to see what an inherently calm person is like because I am not that and I could definitely learn.

Our kid patio

Things that are improving

Not eating dinner with the kids all the time.  Sometimes meals are better when we sit for kid meal and then adult meal.  My new plan is Mon-Thurs we feed kids first, then Fri-Sun we eat all together.  We will see if this works, mostly it means I need to be less hungry at 5:30 kid meal.

Waking up early in the morning.  I am a morning person. I started being an evening person because mornings and baby wakeups were chaos, but they are not as chaos now, and kids are generally sleeping until 6:30 these days.  The problem is, it's hard to switch from being an evening person to a morning person.  It's very easy to stay up later and much harder to go to bed earlier (on a day by day basis).  I'm not planning on being a "in bed by 9 every day" person, but 9:30-5am is 7.5 hours of sleep and I do want to aim for that 3 or 4 days a week.

The weather.  I don't have any impact of this but OMG does it make a big difference

Is anything distinctly "working" or "improving" for you right now?

A failure to plan fun is a plan to fail at being fun?

Fun and Plans

Today Andy and I are going to our local Mountain Bike Trail Center together.  I worked from 7:00 to 9:30pm last night to try and get "caught up" for my day off which is super against my working ethos. I don't really have anything against working at night - I just don't like doing it because I seem to then stay up too late, which is exactly what happened yesterday and I don't think I fell asleep until 10:30. 

For the first time ever, I planned what routes we are going to do and now I'm even more excited.  I don't mean to be a loser here, but planning my fun was fun, and I think I will have more fun doing my fun now that it's planned. 

In case you're curious and want to see what MTB trails are called, the plan I made is as follows

Pedal to top of mountain
Funnel down
Pedal up
Poppity Ping Sessions to Terrys Belly
Uplift (a truck drives me and my bike up, yay)
Melted Welly to Off Grid to Forrest Bump to Kermit
Coffee and cake stop
Pedal up
Sixtapod to Merthyr Rocks
Uplift
????

I don't know if I can actually ride that much but we will see.  Slightly constrained by school times - we have less childcare on a friday - but maybe it's possible?

We were supposed to do this trip on Thursday a few weeks ago but Ezra was ill and I had to stay at home with him.  Andy starts a new job in June where he works on Fridays so this feels like a last chance adventure.  To make this work our nanny is watching the twins, and then my mom taking Ezra to school, and then my mom taking Lily to nursery (which starts at 1, and is right over twin nap, which is why nanny can't do the nursery drop off), and then my mom picking up both kids from school so we can do nanny twin handover, make dinner, and then collect bigger kids. I know it will be fun but there's a lot of logistics involved in a 7 hour escape.

Plans and unfun

Recently I feel I've been missing things that could be planned better.  Small and mostly insignificant things, but I know they all add to the mental load.  

For instance, breakfast is annoying.  Why do we have to do it every day?  We don't usually eat cereal because it doesn't seem super nutritious as compared to pancakes or eggs, but also... toast and peanut butter is nutritions.  And then we run out of toast.  And then... plans.  Blarg.

Lily only has two school summer dresses because I waited until after Easter to buy them and then only bought two because I feel we have too many clothes.  This may be the case, but now I have to do laundry daily until I can buy more and the local shops are out because who waits until it's 20 degrees to buy kids summer uniform? Me.

Not having nursery means our house is basically a childcare setting.  For example, our garden & patio:

This is fine, but means I cannot come downstairs and grab food when twins are awake and home.  Which means, I can eat between 10 and 11:30, and 1:30 and 2:30.  I am trying not to eat breakfast first thing, so recently I have a big meal at 10:30, but usually I try and squeeze in exercise during my lunch break which leaves me very very hungry at 3:30 and also least able to come get more food.  

I am a hungry human and need/want more than an apple or a snackbar at 3:30.

Yesterday my meals were a bit less than optimal

I just feel vaguely unsatisfied with how I'm currently eating - not from a nutrition standpoint - but from an enjoyment of food standpoint.  This could be fixable by planning.  It's just... a lot of planning.

Do you plan your fun? Are you in a meal rut? Can you come make me lunches please?  Or, come mountain biking with me?