Children change so much and I know that in a few months time my daily routine will have changed so much that I just wanted to record this here partly for my own benefit and partly for all the people who ask me how I manage to fit so much into my days. This is my routine on the days that both the big kids are at school / nursery. Cam is only in nursery part time and the days that he is at home with Trinity and I run a little different. Imagine the below with the added fun of a 2 year old thrown into the mix and you'll realise why those days are the days that I long for a glass of gin and tonic when the kids are in bed!

Please note - this is NOT an excuse for the miserable people out there who seem to read my blog with the sole purpose of being irritated by it to email me and explain in great detail how I'm a bad mum / bad business owner / generally bad person for doing everything that I do. Yes, yes, yes. I know all of that, you tell me often enough. I'm a bad mother, bad person, bad friend - blah blah blah. Its a good job I don't listen to you isn't it? Now please don't email me, I don't even read them any more.

Anyway, back to the routine.. If I had my way I would get to sleep in until at least 8am every day. Unforuntately in the real world that doesn't happen and most days I'm out of bed around 7am. if not earlier. Wayne is great at getting up early with Cam who is the first to wake up in the house every day (sometimes 2 hours before I drag myself out of bed!) , Brooke and I are usually a little later and Trinity is the lazy bones in the house.

The big kids and I have breakfast and then I get the three of us dressed, washed and ready for the day. I like to have this done by 7.30 / 8.00 ish if I can. Then they get to run around and play with their toys, read books or do whatever they want (not including watching TV) until it is time for school.

By 8am Trinity gets woken up, dressed and fed so that we can all be out of the house by 8.45. Brooke and Cameron are dropped off at school and nursery and Trinity and I head over to the shop, getting there just in time to listen to Flirty at 9.30 on the radio, this is a very important part of our daily routine! She has a bouncy chair and a million toys in the shop and is quite happy to hang out with me while I try to get stuff done. Typically she sleeps for the first hour or so that we are there anyway.

First on the agenda is the day's post. The sorting office is only 100 yards from the shop but shuts at 12 so getting everythig packed and over to them is first priority. On a typical day there will be anything from 20 - 50 packages to send out so the post can take most of the morning, especially when you take into account the frequent feeding / nappy changing sessions! Printing labels, picking the orders from the shelf, wrapping in tissue paper etc is a lot more time consuming than I used to give credit for..

Once the post is ready we take a walk to the sorting office, often stopping in at the cafe on the way back for a pint of milk / cup of tea / gossip etc before we're back in the shop and back to work.

Dyeing yarn, skeining and labelling, winding cones into skeins, stock takes, photographing, updating the website, booking couriers, putting together wholesale packs and orders, answering email and phone queries - the list is endless. I find enough to keep me busy until lunchtime when we head for home. I could easily find enough to keep me busy all day but I tend to pack things up to take home instead of spending all day every day at the shop.

Back home and while I'm getting lunch ready (tends to be something on toast or soup) I prepare or cook dinner for that evening. If we're having something like lasagne, chilli etc I can get it all cooked and put to one side. Pie and potatoes can be prepared and left ready to cook in the evening, basically I do what I can to make sure that by the time we are all home from school and work there is not much left for me to do in the kitchen. The period between 5 and 7 is the most stressful one for me so if I dont have to cook during that time my life is MUCH easier.

Afer lunch I will sometimes go to bed with Trinity for an hour or so if her naps are working out right for that, or sit down and answer emails / update the website for a bit. There is usually an hour and a half or so until its time to pack up and go and get the big kids.

We're usually all home by about 4pm at which point it is snack time (jam on toast usually) around the kitchen table where we share stories about our days and decide what to do next. Dinner is at 6, which means that whatever I cooked / prepared that morning needs to be ready by then. The couple of hours between getting home and eating dinner are usually spent in the kids play room or outside in the summer with me on the laptop taking full advantage of the wireless internet connection we have, the big kids playing with toys and Trinity just hanging out, being loved and fussed over by all of us.

We all sit down at the table to eat at 6. If Wayne is home from work he joins us and usually Trinity decides that she is hungry too as soon as I start eating so most mealtimes are spent trying not to spill food on her as she drinks her milk as I eat. From 5 ish through until when she falls asleep in the evening is her high maintenance time when she is most unsettled and needs lots of cuddles and feeds.

After dinner is homework / reading time for Brooke followed by a little bit of TV time. The plan is that big kids will be in bed by half seven / eight ish. Then its TV time for the 3 of us until around 10pm or whenever Trinity falls asleep for the night. This is the time that I would have used to been knitting while watching TV but these days I'm more likely to be on the laptop working. There are always a million emails to answer, people to contact, invoices to prepare, paypal admin to deal with, patterns to write and a trillion other things that keep me typing away while chatting and watching TV. Its a good job I can multi task isn't it? I always knew that mu 120 words per minute typing skills would be good for something.