Before I dive into our TGIF Linky Party, I wanted to share another day from A Day in the Life of Another Mom! This series will be moving to Saturdays, but I wanted to share one more in this series with my fabulous party friends before it makes the move!
A Day in the Life of a Mom with Autistic Children by Gayle My Angels with Autism)
I am a Christian homeschooling mommy. I have 2 children, a 5 year old, “Peanut” and a 3 ½ year old “Sassy”. We have a small home right outside a small city in New England. We are an organic family with food allergies to gluten and casein (GFCF) and try our best to make as much from scratch as possible. The big difference between us and many other homeschooling families out there is both my children have Autism. At age 2 Peanut was diagnosed with “Classic Autism.” Around the same age Sassy was diagnosed with Aspergers (a milder form of Autism). After much research and trial and error we made the decision to use biomedical treatment with both our children (under the supervision of an experienced doctor) and haven’t turned back since. Two years after his diagnosis, Peanut is now considered “high functioning”. Sassy is doing SO well after only a year of treatment that we have been told she is ready to “loose” her diagnosis. We know without God we couldn’t be successful on this journey, and we give Him all the glory!
6:00am – I get up (ideally, but it doesn’t happen that way all the time and the days I get up later I am stressed and behind until I go to bed). I get myself a water with lemon and go sit and pray and read my Bible. For me, reading my Bible and praying are an essential ingredient for a good and successful day.
6:30am- Time to start the day! I throw in a load of laundry, put the cloth diapers in the dryer (I wash them and line dry them the night before and use the dryer to “fluff” them up), and put together whatever school stuff we need for the day. Around this time my husband is also up and making his way down to his home office.
7:00am- A shower for mommy! (I can’t live without it!)
7:10am- At this point my Peanut is usually awake so I go get him and let him get settled with a toy or a movie. I then sneak down to the laundry room to get the cloth diapers. We mostly use covers with inserts on Sassy, so I put these all together for the day to save some time later.
7:30am- Sassy usually wakes up at this point. I get her up and start making their juice. As I mentioned before we make almost all our food from scratch, and that includes juice. We juice for our children every morning. While they relax into the couch I make their juice (it only takes about 5 minute’s total). We add in the majority of their supplements into this juice. Everything else is given to them in a dropper or mixed in on a spoon of raw honey.
7:45am/8:00am- I start on breakfast. My goal is to make a different hot breakfast every morning. While this is cooking I take the opportunity to clean out the juicer and flip the dishes around in the dish washer. Depending on our plans for the day I might also throw bread ingredients into the bread maker to get a loaf of GFCF bread started.
8:30am- We all sit down for breakfast. I go over our plan for the day with the kids. My husband works 2 jobs to support our family’s needs but when he is around he comes up around this time to see the kids and give them a kiss.
9:00am- The kids get dressed and brush their teeth.
9:30am/10:30am – This is usually school time. I schedule most of our therapy appointments in the afternoons so I can reserve the mornings to be home. The kids are both in Kindergarten this year so their daily work usually takes 60-90 minutes. I make sure to take advantage of teachable moments as well as activities that are therapeutic throughout the day.
10:30/11:00-11:45 - I let the kids go outside to play (weather permitting), otherwise it’s free play time inside. While the I try to take advantage of some of this time to work on something on my to-do list, like a meal plan, bills, blog, or home school planning.
11:45-Noon - I make lunch. Half the time we eat it at home and half the time (because of appointments) the kids have to take it with them. I try to make the “to go” lunches as fun as possible.
Afternoon
If we don’t have any appointments then we usually have a play date or an activity set up for the afternoon. I have a friend who comes over and watches the kids once a week so I can run errands.
*We do 4 therapies a week for Peanut (OT, PT, Speech, and Music Therapy), Sassy goes to Ballet once a week. The kids and I go to a chiropractor every other week, and my grandmother is in PT for her shoulder, so in all we have a potential to have 6-8 appointments a week not including doctors, dentist, or Naturopath appointments.
When we are home the kids love to play in the house for free play time. Throughout the day I also try to take advantage of “therapeutic” activities or opportunities to work on a particular ABA goal. I might plan an extra craft or play with the kids and use play work on some of our ABA goals. In the later afternoon the kids like to snuggle up and read some books together, then I will let them use the iPad or computer to work on some more school work or therapy related skills while I get supper cooked.
Supper is promptly at 5:30pm (my kids are still very strict with certain parts of their schedule), followed by desert which is almost always fresh organic fruit. After supper is tubs or showers (depending on if they need a good soak or not). We will read books, and do a nightly devotional. When my husband is home in time he does tubs and reading so I can get some picking up done. After this the kids brush their teeth and are off to bed by 7:30pm. Once they are in bed I take my “wet laundry” (the used cloth diapers from the day and any wet clothing from Peanut, who is still potty training), and I start that in the washer.
7:30pm-10:00pm- I now get to catch up on some housework and some of my “to do” list. I have just started to organize more and one thing I have made is a “home making binder” so I work on the daily chores that I didn’t get done during the day (using my binder to keep track). Then I might work on a blog post, a home school project, bake, or work on a personal project (knitting, sewing etc).
10:00pm- Before going off to bed I go down and hang the cloth diapers on the line in the laundry room to dry. I try to get my husband to finish up whatever he’s working on (he usually goes back to work in his home office until bed), and then we go to bed.
*I work as a Registered nurse on Saturdays doing phone triage.
*Any errands that need to get done are usually done after therapy and before dinner time. I will usually grocery shop after church on Sunday or on Monday night if my husband is home to be with the kids.
So that’s an average day in my life. It’s busy but every day is different!
What is your day like?
Would you like to contribute to A Day in the Life of Another Mom? We’d love to read about your day! This series will be ongoing as long as there are people willing to give us all a glimpse into their lives. If you would like to share A Day in Your Life please email me your day to livinglifeintentionallyblog (at) gmail.com. Feel free to include a picture (s). I will let you know when it will be posted. (If you have a blog please let me know as I will include a link to your blog in the post.)
Now on to our weekly TGIF Linky Party!!
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