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)