Establishing A Routine

I'm finding that one of the most difficult things has been establishing a new routine. I'm not sure why that is. I've had to do it many times over the past year and a half. Even before that, when I worked outside the home, I had to constantly put new routines in place when my kids had a milestone, or when I started a new job.

It's been almost a month since the kids started going back to school. I will admit that the first day of school was a little bit crazy. It didn't help that I made a major boo-boo and didn't realize that my three-year-old was supposed to start school on the same day as his brother and sister. In my defense, the school calendar never got changed, and pre-school was supposed to begin on the following Monday. I couldn't help but wonder why no one stopped me when I dropped the other two kids off at school, visited for a few minutes with Caleb, and then left to drive back home from Horseheads. Imagine my surprise when I was sitting here, working, about an hour later, only to get this phone call from Caleb's teacher:

Miss Emma: Nicole?

Nicole: Yes?

Miss Emma: Ummm...we were just wondering if Caleb was coming to school today? 

Nicole: Uhh...Caleb doesn't start school today. I thought preschool started on Monday. 

Miss Emma: No...I'm...pretty sure it starts today. 

Oh. My. Gosh.

I quickly made his lunch, and put some decent clothes on him before dragging him out the door for yet, another trip to the school.

It's been an interesting time.

Since that day, I've enjoyed weekdays filled with silence in my home. It's wonderful to just sit here with nothing but the clickety-clack of my keyboard to fill the air. I love it. It's amazing how much work you can get done when you're not running around after a toddler, or when you don't constantly have to change dirty diapers.

I'm really loving my job these days, I just really need to work on getting that routine down. Getting up earlier seems to be the key to success, but it's not always easy to get up at 5 am. I'm going to try to do it again tomorrow though.

I think where I run into difficulty is when I think of how I used to work before. When you have kids at home, and you work from home, you basically try to fit work in whenever you can. When it was just me and my three-year-old at home all day, I would play with him and write a post, then play with him a little more, then write a post. Now, I feel a little bit lost. Even though today was a really good, productive day.

I'm going to keep working on my work schedule. I know I'll eventually find a way that works for me.

If you work at home, what are some things you do to keep yourself on task? Do you have a regular schedule that you follow?