1. Who are you?
Hi! I’m Hailey. Wife to Taylor and mom to my two beautiful babies Laine and George (who happen to be Irish twins…yes, just a bit chaotic). I spent the first half of my life in Connecticut and have spent the second half of my life in the beautiful Midwest. I am a graduate of Indiana University (Go Hoosiers!), and before I had kids I worked in technology sales, the wedding industry, and corporate communications. I am currently a Rodan + Fields consultant and the writer/amateur blogger behind 2 Kids & a Latte.
I am a stay at home/work from home mom who is attempting to raise two tiny humans while keeping my temper tantrums to a maximum of 2 per day. Keyword: my. I have had many demanding jobs before, but nothing takes the cake quite like motherhood. It is at the same time the hardest and most beautiful project I have ever worked on, and not a single day goes by where I don’t think that I am messing everything and everyone up. Good news, there is always tomorrow to start over. As my uncle constantly reminds me “the days are long, but the years are short.” He couldn’t be more right.
2. When is your favorite time of day?
Early in the morning before the kids are awake is hands down my most favorite time of day. There is something wonderfully peaceful about being able to drink a cup of hot coffee and watch the morning news before there is a tiny person gnawing on my leg begging for breakfast.
My second favorite time of day is definitely during the morning hours before we have anywhere to go. We like to make breakfast and have fun conversations about what we dreamed about. Laine always says that she had dreams about horses, specifically blue horses. Oh to have the imagination of a child. My kids are always the sweetest in the morning. They play nicely, eat their breakfast, and are in all around good moods. There is a drastic difference between their attitudes at 9am and 5pm. See next question :).
3. When is your most chaotic time of day?
5 pm. Need I say more? This is when my kids are sick of me, hungry for dinner, and just would rather run rampant around my house pushing and shoving each other until someone ends up screaming. I’m sorry, you didn’t know that I was raising a pack of wolves? Me either. Taylor usually gets home around 6 or 6:30 so if I can somehow keep them entertained from 5-6 then we are usually all good. The three “P’s” usually work for us: play-doh, painting, and Paw Patrol. Oh and one “W” for me: wine. Keep in mind that I am usually cooking dinner during this time as well, so if we can make it to 6pm with all our fingers and toes and no paint on the walls, that is a win in our household!
4. What is your Mom Chaos Confession?
I hide on the stairs when I need to get away from the kids. I am shaking my head at myself as I write this, but it’s the truth. If my kids are in the play room and playing nicely together, and I need a little break, I sit on the stairs where I can see them, but they can’t see me, and check my social media accounts. Both kids know where to find me, so if 3 minutes go by and they haven’t seen or heard me, they usually come barging up the stairs to come get me, and then it turns into a fight of who gets to hold moms phone…spoiler alert…I never win.
5. What is your best tip for managing the chaos?
Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to be the best of the best. You don’t always have to have the best dressed kids, the smartest kids, the most well-behaved kids, and the cleanest house. If you make it out of the house and the best you could do was to put on some yoga pants, brush your teeth, and throw a hat on (my daily uniform), then bravo mama! Right now we are in the most beautifully chaotic season of our lives and some days you are going to win, and some days you are going to feel like you’ve been trampled on my a stampede of wildebeests. Those days, and all of the seemingly mundane days in between are so magical, we just don’t know it yet.
6. What does a typical day in your chaos look like?
6:00am – I wake up, let the dog out, make coffee and watch the morning news while scrolling through my Instagram feed.
7:00am – Laine and George wake up. It amazes me how they wake up at the same time, it’s like they were womb mates. Both from their night time sleep and their afternoon naps. I think it’s pretty cool how that happens. Usually when they wake up they are pretty hungry, so I get right to making breakfast.
7:30 – Breakfast time!
8:00-8:45 – Depending on the day, we are usually getting dressed and ready to start our day. Laine has pre-school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so we are out the door by 8:45 on those days. On the days that she doesn’t have school we are usually out the door by 9:00 to go to the gym. They have an awesome children’s center at the gym we belong to, and Laine and George practically beg to go there…I must be super boring. :o)
9:00-11:30 – Gym time and/or preschool. On days when Laine is at school, George and I will go to the gym for an hour and then after that we have a little one on one time. Sometimes that consists of just running errands but most of the time we like to go to Starbucks, or get a muffin at the local bakery. Once the weather warms up, we will be spending this time at the park, that kid loves to run and play outside. On the days that Laine doesn’t have school, we will still go to the gym and then afterwards we usually come home and play in their play room. This time consists of puzzles, books, dress up, and throwing cars down the slide, I guess that’s what I get when I have a girl and a boy.
12:00 Lunch time! I try to keep my kids snacks to a minimum between breakfast and lunch, so that they actually eat their food, so by the time lunch time rolls around they are pretty hungry, and so am I! We eat lunch together and talk about what we are going to do for the rest of the day (aka the time in between when they wake up from their naps and when dad gets home).
12:40-1:00 – Book time. We pick out 5 or 6 books that we read before their naps.
1:00-3:30 – Nap time. Hallelujah! This is the time where I get most of my work done. It is amazing how much you can get done when you only have a short period of time. During this time I am doing a mixture of R+F work, laundry, cleaning the house, prepping for dinner, throwing the ball for our dog if it’s nice outside, and if I’m super lucky and have an extra 20 minutes to spare at the end, sometimes I even sneak in a quick cat nap.
3:30 – Snack time.
3:45-5:00 – This is when we usually get to be outside. If the weather permits, then we will take the dog for a nice long walk, go play at the park, or just go on an adventure in our yard. My kids and I are definitely the type of people who need to be outside at least once a day, so it is important for us to get out when it is nice and soak up as much Vitamin D as possible. Cabin fever hits us hard in the winter months, so come spring time you won’t really ever find us indoors, unless of course, it’s to nap.
5:00-6:00 – 3 P’s: Play-Doh, Painting, Paw Patrol. At this point in the day it is pretty much anything goes to keep the kids happy. Usually I pull out the Play-Doh or the paint. Because that isn’t something they get to do whenever they want, they find it very fun. This attitude lasts for approximately 2.5 minutes, and then we are on to the next best thing…cartoons. I don’t really have super strict rules on t.v. time, but because we are usually pretty busy, this is the only time they get to watch a few episodes. Laine’s current favorite is Paw Patrol, and George is in love with “MICK MAWW” – Mickey Mouse.
6:00 – Dad gets home! By the time Taylor walks in the door you would think that I have been holding my children captive all day making them stare at a blank wall. They are so excited to see their dad, and I get it, and I love it. He is definitely the “fun” parent. As soon as he gets home, the three of them go upstairs, throw all of the pillows off my nicely made bed, and take turns jumping from the bed to the pillows and having epic wrestling matches. If it wasn’t for the copious amounts of laughter coming from all three of them, you would think that the Harlem Globetrotters were having a showdown in my bedroom…it’s that loud. This 30 minutes of fun time for them gives me just the right amount of time to finish up dinner.
6:30 – Dinner time. We all eat dinner together, which is something that is very important to me. I know that not every night it can be this way, but when I was growing up, it was important to have family dinners, and I am trying to instill that in my children starting at a young age. We sit down together, say our prayers, eat yummies, and have great conversations about blue horses and Mick Maww.
7:15-8:00 – Bath time and getting ready for bed. The kids get a bath almost every night. Most days they end up with marker or dirt all over them, so it’s not exactly an option. Plus they absolutely love their bath time. On most nights, Taylor is in charge of bath time and bed time. He enjoys getting to spend that quality one on two time with the kids, and I know they have way more fun with him than they do with me…it’s obvious by the amount of water on the floor in the bathroom. Let’s just say we’re lucky our ceiling hasn’t fallen through yet! After bath time, he gets the kids in their pjs and then I come upstairs to read books with them. Each of us takes a kid and we read 4 or 5 books with them before bed. Then it’s kisses, prayers, and “I love you ask high as the sky and as deep as the sea,” and off to dreamland.
8:00-9:00 – This is usually when Taylor and I sit down to watch a show together. After about 45 minutes of t.v. we are both so exhausted that we have to drag ourselves up the stairs for bed. We are usually in bed by 9:00 and watch one more show on our iPad then it’s lights out. I need a good 8 hours of sleep in order to keep my temper tantrums to a minimum the next day.
Holy cow, that seems so much easier when it’s written down! I can assure you that nothing really ever goes according to plan, and usually I am trying to get one kids coat and shoes on while the other kid is taking their coat and shoes off. We are constantly rushing out the door, and I probably do a bit too much rushing. One of my resolutions is to slow down, it is something that I work on every minute of every day. Like I said earlier, we shouldn’t put so much pressure on ourselves to be the perfect mom. At the end of the day, I have apologized to my kids as much as I make them apologize to each other and whenever someone tells me “wow, you have your hands full!” I always respond with “if you think our hands our full, you should see our hearts.”
Read more from Hailey at 2 Kids & a Latte
Check out our other moms and learn from their chaos here
Are you a mom surviving the chaos? Email me at caroline@caffeinatedchaos.com to share your chaos!
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