Structure

One thing that I lack big time in my life is structure. I am a pretty free-spirited, unstructured kind of girl...pretty low maintenance and easy going. Since I am now the mother of a child who needs structure, is very high maintenance and not as easy going when left to his own devices, I am needing to shift my thinking.
Since our new routine begins on Monday, I am actually writing out a schedule of what our days will look like when I work, when I'm home, when Daddy's off and when I play on Sundays. I'm stepping back from the worship team and am going to play every other week for right now because I have too much going on in my life and it is the only place where I have flexibility. Hopefully when the house sells I can come back full-time cause we'll be in town and transportation won't be as much of an issue. I know I'll miss it...but I'm slowly burning out and need a breather
Back to the schedule, so far, so GREAT! I feel so much more in control knowing there is a method to all this madness! And all this time I was wondering what to do about Caden when it was ME that needed a change.
I will spend all day on Thursdays and Saturdays alone with Caden and right now we have a 7:00am-7:30pm schedule, broken (for the most part) into time slots of 30 minutes or more. There is daddy time, music time, room time, free play time, mommy structured playtime, nap time, snack time, meal time, tv time (yes, we're going to keep the TV off most of the day!!!) outside planned activities (like the library, the store, the playground and play dates), dinner time, bath time, story time and bed time! A full day of structured fun.
I've waited much too long to implement this type of thing for fear of the schedule running my life...but now that I've created it and am implementing it, it's not running my life, it's aiding my life and making it easier.
Jay will be with Caden from 8-5:30 on Tuesdays which is great cause they'll get to have some one on one time. We're not sure exactly when Caden will ever see his parents together, but hopefully life will bring us to a point where we have more time to spend together...for right now, we're working with what we've got and we're finding that we've got a lot!