This post is the second in a series from a talk I gave about my routine ideas to our monthly GEMS® meeting along with a panel of Moms from different life situations.

I am home with our 2 year old daughter Isabelle 5 days a week, and I have a basic flexible routine that I use on those days. My husband also does this routine on his “Daddy Daughter” Day-well, at least as far as I know!

I work 2 days a week and I find that parts of every single day (and week) are different. I have made a printed and laminated schedule for every day of the week! I’m pretty sure they thought I was crazy in the store when I brought these in to be laminated!

The reason I made them this way is so I can write on them with a white board marker when something unique to that week needs to be added and put them all on the fridge. I found this to be helpful since application of the routine is a family effort and not something I am doing alone.

There are times when your baby is young that your routine is constantly changing so you may want to print one every week for your fridge instead of laminating one for reuse.

Let me say here I do not run a “schedule” in my home- in my opinion those are impossible and frustrating for all involved. If you have ever tried to do anything with small children you learn quickly that trying to hurry them along just causes anxiety for everyone.

Instead we have an “order” or routine in which we do training and other activities throughout the day, however some days we do need to be more timely in accomplishing this first part of our day. I recommend the use of a kitchen timer for training activities.I was resistant to it initially as it seemed too strict, however the more I use it the better Isabelle has responded to my training efforts. We now have 3 timers! One upstairs, one downstairs, and a digital one for small time periods.

Coming soon…part 3 of my talk on routine ideas…how my morning goes…