The official bedtime countdown . . .

Whether your spouse is gone for months, weeks, or just a few days - when you have little ones at home, it is difficult to say the least.  I've learned over time to have a routine, and I've more recently learned to stick to it.

Art Project Mondays - we make at least one art project, usually to send Daddy.  Sometimes we have a plan, sometimes we jackson pollick it.  I remind them constantly that when they become famous artists they better tell Oprah who made them.

Tuesdays - We make "the jumping thing".  Let me break it down, we take every pillow, blanket, cushion, or other soft thing in the house and pile it in front of the couch - put on a little music and they go insane.  I have to admit, they prefer lady gaga to jump to.  I have many a video of E shaking her bootie  singing La La Lilly Ba Shake that Lilly Ba.

Wednesday - Grocery Shopping.  The girls get to pick and "make" dinner with me.  They have started greeting me at the door at Trader Joe's with suckers to avoid the noise - seriously - no joke.

Thursday - Both girls sleep in bed with me.  It seems like an awful idea, and took quite a bit of training to get them to A) Stay in Bed B) Sleep

Angelina's Friday -  if we don't have visitors, we order take out from Angelina's Kitchen!  So amazingly delicious.  E figures out if someone is visiting that weekend by asking what is for dinner.  Angelina's means it is a girls weekend, "actual" "home cooked food" means company!  Note the quotes around home cooked food and actual.

Saturday - We start the day with a long bath.  I have them nearly convinced it is swimming in a little pool - O buys it, I'm pretty sure E just humors me.  We end the day with a campout on the living room floor.  We go to bed "late" and fall asleep watching movies.  This has taken some perfecting to keep them both in the room with me - I usually have to hold O down.  There is also a complicated system of barricades.

Sunday - church and the library.  We usually have to get ice cream too - there is an ice cream parlor right outside the library - genius marketing - the library costs me a superman ice cream cone and a dish of lady bug a week.

This routine helps them know what is coming and helps me very silently track the passing of time.    For longer times I plan rewards for all of us.  At one month we bake a cake and I get a pair of shoes.  At two months we go someplace very special and I get a pedicure etc.  We celebrate two things, making it through and being one week, month, months closer to Daddy..

In the past few weeks we have been so busy we've lost our routine.  E took an opportunity to remind me last week that "we used to have a pattern, kind of like polka dots, but not really."  We are now on an E declared "home-cation" where we are back to our routine until the further notice.

So now we count the minutes, the hours, the days, until we are, in the words of E, "A family all together and not so far apart. . . "