a new approach

monday is my day off.
therefore, it's my most important day.
it is also my most exhausting.

i find that - to keep up with my girls - I have to be proactive, otherwise I will get pummelled and left for dead. so this morning I woke up with a new gameplan: I was going to approach the day as many football coaches approach a game....by quarters.

It dawned on me that a whole day from start to finish of taking girls to the potty, washing bibs, preparing meals, roughhousing, getting them in carseats, out of carseats, wiping noses, reading books, cleaning up, then uncleaning up what i had just cleaned up, etc...was just to much to get my arms around (i know, i know...i'm talking about just a day, when my blessed wife has to think in terms of years).

So I broke the day up into quarters.

1st Quarter: wake up through breakfast.
2nd Quarter: post-breakfast through 2:00PM nap time
3rd Quarter: post-nap through dinner
4th Quarter: bath, books, bedtime

My goal, you see, was to win more quarters than I lost and...to own the 4th quarter. I've kept a small scorecard. Here's how we did:

TeamDeeble: 4
Meltdown: 0

Oh yeah. We killed today. We decorated a Christmas tree, I raked/mowed leaves, Mia and I ran errands and had a lunch date, girls were hugging, they were sharing, there were new songs written, no one bit anyone,...I mean, it was a really good day and I'm sticking with my new strategy.

Elise is a bit worried, though, that I'm taking the football analogy a bit far. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that, after dinner, I shouted "It's the 4th Quarter baby!" and then made everyone raise 4 fingers in the air as we hit the showers - err, bathtub.