A Day in the Life – 11 Months

Only a couple more of these “A Day in the Life” posts before Cullen is one year old!

Actually Cullen turned 11 months yesterday, but who’s counting. I love that he is becoming more independent and is learning new things each day.

It is fun recapping a typical day for us each month of his life, so here’s what our days are looking like at 11 months.

Thursday, October 24

7:45 p.m. Cullen goes down for the night. Craig was actually able to get him to sleep. This is a first! Now maybe I could actually do an overnight trip by myself?!

11:30 p.m. I hear him fuss, but he goes right back to sleep. (We have been working really hard on getting him to fall asleep on his own. It is not perfect, but we’ve made some major strides.)

I think he might have fussed again, but I was too tired to take note of the time and he fell right back to sleep.

Friday, October 25

4:35 a.m. Cullen wakes up and starts fussing. I wait about 5-7 minutes before sending Craig in to check on him. (We are trying to night-wean him.) Craig isn’t able to get him down, so I go in a nurse him back to sleep.

5:30 a.m. My alarm goes off. Time to go for my run. I guess this view was kind of worth getting out of bed for. Now if old it wasn’t so cold in the mornings!

5:35 a.m. I have my pre-workout Generation UCAN drink. (I swear by this stuff!) And get changed into my running clothes. I don’t have to worry about feeding Cullen or pumping since I did that an hour ago. I also go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. (I can’t run with dirty teeth.)

5:55 a.m. I start my 9 mile run. I run 1.5 miles to the track and do some drills to try to increase my leg turnover and strength my hip flexors. Then I finish the remaining 7.5 miles through the neighborhoods. The run goes fine. I run a really easy pace of 8:21.

7:30 a.m. Return home from my run. Have my post-workout UCAN drink and foam roll for a few minutes.

7:40 a.m. I hear Cullen wake up. After a few minutes Craig goes and gets him, and I change his diaper. We hang out for a bit before heading downstairs for breakfast.

8:00 a.m. I start preparing breakfast for everyone. I make breakfast sandwiches for Craig and I, and Cullen gets banana slices and Cheerios.

8:20 a.m. My breakfast is an open-faced egg sandwich with tomatoes (fresh from our greenhouse!), cheese, avocado, and avocado salsa. Yum! And tea because I’m freezing from my run.

8:30 a.m. We finish up breakfast, and I start cleaning the kitchen. However, I decide I’m still hungry, so I have a bowl of Honey Nut Chex.

8:40 a.m. We go upstairs, and I change Cullen out of his pajamas. We then spend some time reading books. (He absolutely loves reading books!) He’ll go to his bookshelf, pull off his favorite book, hand it to me, and then want to crawl up in my lap. And he has to turn each and every page of the book.

9:00 a.m. I pick up our bedrooms, make the bed, and get ready to go to the gym to lift weights.

9:30 a.m. We drive to the gym. When we arrive, I drop Cullen off at the child care, and I lift weights for 45 minutes. The Body Renew on the south side of town is brand new, and it is the nicest gym I’ve been to in town! I really like going there.

10:45 a.m. We arrive back home. I change Cullen’s diaper, and we do our pre-sleep routine. Luckily he goes down pretty easily. He’s been pretty good about his morning nap, it is his afternoon nap that has been non-existent.

11:10 a.m. I take a shower and get ready for the day.

11:40 a.m. I start prepping my lunch and snack on some random things: a piece of bread, almonds, and dried fruit. At the same time (It is impossible for me to do only one thing at a time.), I start making a batch of Whole Grain Morning Glory Muffins. (Probably my favorite recipe for muffins.)

12:10 p.m. Cullen wakes up. He actually wakes up happy too, which is rare. (Usually he wakes up crying/fussing.)

12:15 p.m. I finish prepping my lunch and get some food for Cullen. My lunch includes a salad, turkey burger, and cottage cheese. Cullen has cottage cheese, turkey burger, spinach, strawberries, and bread. He loves his solid foods!

12:40 p.m. My sister calls! We chat about everything and anything: her engagement pictures (She got engaged a couple weeks ago!), shopping, work, Cullen. . .but come to think of it, I don’t think we even talked about running (how sad!).

1:10 p.m. Finish baking muffins and clean up the kitchen. This takes a while. We take breaks to play, change a diaper, start a load of cloth diapers, mail a letter, take selfies, etc.

2:30 p.m. We go upstairs and start packing for our trip this weekend. We are driving down to Kenai for the marathon relay on Sunday. Craig and I are each running a leg along with two other friends of mine. It is always a fun time. Last year I ran a leg of the relay 8 months pregnant!

3:00 p.m. I try to get Cullen down for an afternoon nap–keyword try. I couldn’t tell you the last time he took two naps in one day. He shows all the signs he is tired, but he won’t go down.

3:10 p.m. Instead he has quiet time in his crib while I start this post.

3:45 p.m. I give up on any hopes of a nap, so we play, read books, and sample the muffins.

4:20 p.m. Cullen is being super fussy, so I try to get him down for a nap again. Normally it would be too late for a nap, so I hope it doesn’t affect the time he needs to go to bed.

4:30 p.m. He actually falls asleep. I work on this blog post some more.

5:00 p.m. He wakes up, which is good. (I would have woke him up if he had slept any longer.) We get ready to walk to a friend’s to deliver some muffins to her as it was her birthday yesterday.

5:15 p.m. We go on our walk, and wow has it turned cold! Windy and in the low 40s.

5:50 p.m. We return from our walk, and Craig is just finishing up with dinner.

6:00 p.m. Dinner: veggie and bean fajitas times two! The are one of Craig’s specialties.

6:45 p.m. We wrap up dinner, and I start getting Cullen ready for bed. We do our standard routine: bath, pajamas, brush teeth, and read books.

7:15 p.m. He isn’t looking too tired, so I let him play some more.

7:45 p.m. We try again. . .success. He’s down for the night.

8:00 p.m. I finish cleaning up the kitchen, handwash dishes, start a load of laundry, and pick up the living room.

8:45 p.m. I get ready for bed.

9:10 p.m. I finish this blog post.

9:45 p.m. Lights out for me.

The end!