8 Hrs in a Life of a Work From Home Mom during Pandemic : My Monday Routine

My husband woke me up at 3AM cause I asked to do so since my shift is at 4AM. But I chose to stay in bed for another hour. My husband has to go to the market early to buy vegies, meat and any other else which will be displayed (sell) in our little store.

At about 4AM, I stood-up, went to the washroom to fix myself and afterwards, went directly to my PC and logged in.

I am struggling logging in to my Office machine (via remote desktop). It took me 35 minutes before able to login.

Unfortunately, my youngest son woke up while I am still struggling to connect to my office machine. He started to cry but I pretended not heard him crying cause I have to focus with what I am doing.

Luckily, my husband went back from the market at around 4:40 AM. Just enough before my meeting starts. We have a call at 5AM and on that call, I have to report our start of week check result. This check is mandatory for us to make sure that our system is ready and all okay before the users came in to use it during business hours.

He soothe our crying son so that my meeting went well (no crying toddler in the background).

After my meeting, my youngest son approached me and sits into my lap. So I continued with my work while my son is on my lap. We both ate oatmeal at around 6:00AM but at around 6:30 AM, my son told me that he wanted to sleep again. But before I brought him to sleep, I went down first to open the door cause our stay out helper usually comes in at around 7:30 AM or much later but the agreement was actually 7:00 AM. She's just new with us actually. She just started last month. She went home at around 5:30 PM (but the agreement was till 6:00PM). I don't mind if she's always late, or she went home early. As long as she's doing her job well and as long as she's happy working here with us, it's okay with me.

Going back to my routine, I and my youngest son went back to the room and he immediately latched on as soon as we have lay down(he's breastfeeding) but unexpectedly, I fell asleep as well while waiting him to sleep.

It's already 8:00 AM when I woke up (that was a good 1.5 hrs of sleep though). I still felt so sleepy but I have to wake up already to face my work. All of the kids are still asleep. As expected, our stay out helper already arrived an is almost done cleaning our living room and the kitchen.

I went to my desk, read mails and do some work related stuffs. And then by 9:00 AM, I felt hungry again. I went down to the kitchen, reheat our left over rice, and fry dried fish and scrambled eggs (for the kids). I quickly grabbed my breakfast afterwards and took a snapshot of my foodies as well to share it with my noise friends. Just few minutes after I went back to my desk to start working, my youngest son woke up, and cried looking for me. So I went to our bedroom and let him sleep again cause he's still sleepy by the looks of his eyes and his mood as well :). He immediately fell asleep and so I went back to work again.

Now, it's past 12:00 noon, and I am just on a waiting game :)..waiting game till my shift ends (1:00 PM). I am alone in my shift so I have no-one to talk to usually. My colleague's shift starts at 1:30 PM so we don't have any overlap during Mondays. Every Monday, my shift starts at 4:00 AM and ends at 1:00 PM but Tuesdays to Fridays it starts at 6:00 AM then ends at 3:00 PM. Luckily, my workload during my shift is not that heavy hence I am able to manage it alone.

I think that's it for now. I am actually thinking to write my whole Monday routine hence I entitled it as "A day in a life of a work from home mom". But I changed my mind cause I think it'll be a lengthy article if I will have to put my entire Monday routine, so changed the title to "8 hrs in a life of a work from home mom" instead. Yes it's just a routine. A repetitive tasks.

Monday is my most lighter weekday. I think I am just being productive at work for like 4 hrs out of 8 hrs of my shift if I am going to compress it, then the rest are being spent taking care of my toddler, and of course having some naps.

Before, when we don't have a stay out helper yet, I was too busy cause I have to do all of our house chores alone. But now, I felt so relax (in terms of house chores cause in terms of my stress level on my kids it's still the same) so I am super thankful to our house helper who help me clean the house while I am busy at work. She brings a lot of convenience to us. Not to mention the laundry which she also does now. Before, I am doing laundry every Wednesdays (midweek) and then Saturdays (my day off). I do it twice a day so I won't struggle much in the laundry load. But now, it's out of bucket list anymore hence I have time now to relax on weekends.

Thank you again for patiently reading my story.