I’m sitting here sipping on my second coffee for the morning. It’s 1149am and I haven’t eaten breakfast. It’s also soy. Apparently soy is bad and I should be drinking almond milk. I really can’t keep up with my milks...
Anyway, I’m starting to get the shakes and again I’m reminding myself to start eating breakfast. A little bowl of cereal. Or a piece of toast. Anything! But day after day, I skip it. How does anyone with two toddlers running the morning show find the time to sit down and eat breakfast? If you do, I want your secrets. It’s a bad habit of mine and I have many of them. They say it takes around 23 days to break a habit. We all know that changing little things in your life (rising early instead of going to bed late, for example) can make a huge difference to your wellbeing. And we also know that when you’re a mother, prioritising your own wellbeing often falls right to the bottom of the list. There are some bad habits such as coffee which I don’t want to give up – it makes me very happy and I don’t think one or two is really a bad habit– but there are others such as skipping breakfast and only drinking coffee until midday that aren’t working so well for me. So here they are: the bad habits I’m working on changing… Photo: Julie Adams Hair and makeup: Elsa Morgan Georgie wears J.Crew top and H&M jeans and sunglasses
Going to bed late
It didn’t really matter if I went to bed late before I had kids. I knew I had guaranteed sleep ahead of me – no interruptions. But now, you never know what you’re going to get. Last night was shocking and today I feel like I’m stumbling around on a rocky boat. It doesn’t help that I stayed up late working. I’m often on my laptop at midnight starting emails with “my apologies for not replying sooner”. Recently, I’ve faced facts: I’ll never get on top of my inbox and working late isn’t helping the situation. Funnily, I’ve never been a night owl. I was never the last one on the dance floor. I was the one who would sneak out the back door without telling anyone because I was tired. Yet, motherhood seems to keep me up. Night after night. There will be never be enough hours in the day. A good friend of mine wakes at 5am every other day, meditates, clears her inbox and gets on top of her day before her son wakes. Now, for anyone with young children, a 5am wake up isn’t always going to work (and your kids might already be awake) but even if it’s one or two days a week, it’ll help you to feel like you control the day. So come spring (I’m not changing this one in winter) and I’m determined to break the night owl habit and become an early bird.
Skipping breakfast
A typical morning in our house is chaotic, partly due to the fact that I hate getting out of bed because I’m tired from the night before. My eldest daughter does her best to get me out of bed and if she fails, her next move is to grab her sister, jump on me, and they’ll both start singing row, row, row your boat. Ah, no alarm will jolt you out of bed like a toddler will. My husband and I race around getting the girls dressed, and if it’s a pre-school day, throw together something for their lunch, brush the knots out of their hair, find shoes that match, change shoes when they chuck a tantrum over the shoes I’ve selected, make sure they eat some Weetbix while stopping my youngest from wiping it all over our dining room chairs before it goes all dry and crusty. By the time we’re out the door, I haven’t touched breakfast. I grab a coffee on the way to pre-school (or wherever we’re going) and that’s about it until midday. Come 12pm and I’m a little shaky, anxious and have hanger (a combo of being both hungry and angry). I need to start eating breakfast. And making the girls’ lunch the night before (I used to do that but have gotten out of the habit).
Procrastinating
I’ve always worked best when I’m working to a deadline and the adrenalin kicks in. It was the same when I worked in magazines, it wouldn’t matter if I had weeks to write a story, I’d always wait until the last minute. This is probably my most annoying habit – I’d save myself a lot of stress if I just did things well in advance, but with a little adrenalin I seem to work better and faster. I’m more efficient if I have a little pressure put on me. Now that I’m a mother, it’s a lot more stressful because things never go to plan, and if you leave things to the very last minute, you’re guaranteed to drop some balls (often all of them in my case).
Turn off my iPhone when I’m with my girls
I’m working on this one. I’ve started to leave it in the kitchen when I get home so it’s not with me when we’re doing bath time or reading books. If it’s within reaching distance, I often can’t help myself. And it’s annoying because there’s nothing particularly exciting to look at on my phone – Instagram can wait! I don’t want my girls growing up with a picture of me on my iPhone in their mind. I’m also making a conscious effort to minimize the girls’ screen time during the week. If we’re having a difficult day and the girls are fighting a lot, there will be more screen time, but I find when we stay out and about in the fresh air, everyone is happier. So wish me luck. And I hope you love the site this week. Georgie x
Im guilty of all of these – It’s 10:09am, I’m on my second coffee, no breakfast and I’ve achieved very little before my next meeting. Im so glad I’m not the only one!
I’m slowly getting there. I’m forcing myself to have cereal each morning. Baby steps! x