My ever-changing morning routine
If there’s anything that is constantly amazing me about having kids, it’s that things never stop changing and evolving — things they do, things you do, routines to adjust.
When the toddler was a month or two old, I would shower and do my makeup while he sat in his bouncy seat (or carseat) in the bathroom. It was awesome when he got the hiccups, because then I didn’t feel the need to whip around the shower curtain and check on him every two seconds.
When he started crawling, I made a new plan and would set him down the hall from the bathroom, and rush through my makeup/tooth-brushing while he slowly ambled down the hall towards me.
When his crawling got too fast, I started sticking him in the (empty) tub while I got myself ready, and he’d play with bath toys. Then he graduated to climbing in and out of the tub on his own (which kept him occupied, so, cool).
Now, at 16 months? None of that will work anymore. However, the Toddler of Terror now loves really participating with me as I get ready in the morning.
- He loves getting in the shower with me — which is definitely not awesome when I need to wash my hair, and two hands would be nice.
- He is obsessed with sitting on the counter, brushing his teeth — always preferring MY brush to his own toddler-sized one. I think it’s the Colgate taste.
- We get dressed together. Often I get dressed first, while he runs around in my bathrobe (another thing he loves). Sometimes I also use this time to put away clean laundry.
- We comb out our wet hair together. He tries to help me put clips in mine.
- Then I usually sit in his room and put on my makeup, while he plays with the compacts and pretends to put it on himself — often just chewing on the powder puff thingy and the brushes.
While I rarely get to shower alone anymore (only on Darling Husband’s days off), it is nice to have a new getting-ready routine that works for us. He seems to be having a blast, I’m getting showered, dressed and ready. Everybody wins!
How do you juggle getting yourself ready in the morning?
One Comment on “My ever-changing morning routine”
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Heather's Handmade Life 
Husband and I have an unspoken trade-off system that seems to work pretty well. One goes in and gets the dude and changes his diaper while the other showers (often, one of us showers at night to make the mornings run smoothly). Our boy usually plays in our room while we get dressed and then we pop him into his high chair and we all have breakfast together — one of us feeds the boy, while the other packs lunches … so on, and so forth. We dress the boy and let him play around our very-child-proofed home while we finish last-minute things and out the door we go, all at the same time, into two cars and on our way. It's chaos, really, but it works!
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