Quite a boring story on routines

Now that India has started going to the crèche, and Matias is back at school, we have started settling into some kind of routines.

Heikki goes to work early, around 6:30, to get to work before the traffic gets bad. He travels mostly against the traffic, but it still takes him a minimum of 35 minutes to get to the Uni.

Matias now goes to school with Seija and Joona, who pick him up around 7:30. Matias and I go to the gate well before that and have a chat, or read his schoolbooks. We don't do homework then, but read ahead. Today we read two chapters of history and learned about George Washington.

India usually starts waking up at around the time I come inside and open the curtains in our bedroom. By then the sun already shines brightly. India eats a light breakfast sitting on the kitchen counter, while secretly dropping tidbits for the dogs and commenting: "India will not fall. No, India won't fall."

On Mondays and Fridays I pick Joyce up from her house, and then take India to the crèche. While Joyce works her magic around the house, I read biochemistry, bioinformatics and Unix books.

I pick India up from the crèche sometime before one o'clock. She's ready for a nap then, and sleeps until we leave for Matias's school around 2:20. If Joyce has been at our house I take her home at the same time. Heikki likes picking Matias up from school but he's often at a late meeting. In the past week or so, we've also brought Joona to Hout Bay with us.

This term Matias has had less homework than what we got used to last term, so he has not needed to spend the whole evening doing homework. Most afternoons Heikki takes the kids for a swim to the pool, while I prepare dinner. I got an empty-paged recipe book from Matias for Christmas, and I've been trying out different recipes and then added them to the book.

Matias and I still spend quite a lot of time with the homework, even though it's not a necessity. I don't do them for him, but I like listening to him when he reads the history/social studies book out loud. We've both learned a great deal. When doing English homework, we learn to spell difficult words by pronouncing the words the Finnish way. To make the task even more fun, we try to sound like two opera singers.

Most often we try to get to bed by ten. India watches a DVD (lately either Moomins, Monsters Inc or Shrek 2) before falling asleep. She twists and turns in bed, and I've slowly started thinking she needs a bed of her own.