Reading Mamas

After posting yesterday about how important it is for Mamas to be reading daily, I thought about this topic a lot today.
A typical day in our household goes like this. IF Ram doesn't have any meetings or appointments (which not counting Sunday is most days), then Ram, Ewe, and Lamb 3 sleep in as long as possible. Usually Lamb 1 and 2 get up at 8am and play quietly in the living room until Ram or Ewe get up. Most days Ram gets up about 8:30 and lets Ewe sleep in until 9 or 9:30. In that hour or half hour Ram changes diapers, makes sure Lamb 1 has clean underwear on, makes coffee for himself, gets a cup of milk for Lamb 2 and 3, and sometimes gets cold cereal for the Lambs. We usually try to get dressed before going to get the mail which comes about 11am. I know it's a bad habit, but we don't usually eat much breakfast. We either make brunch type food or lunch to eat after the ones that went to get to the mail get home-about 11:30 or noon. We try to have family devotions at lunch. Ram is busy nearly every afternoon either visiting people, meetings, teaching, or writing a sermon etc. Some days we have activities like ECFE, but most days are free for Ewe and the Lambs. Lamb 3 takes a nap about 1pm. Lamb 1 takes rest time and Lamb 2 takes a nap at 2pm. Often Ram has meetings at night. Bedtime is 8pm for Lamb 1 and 2. Bedtime for Lamb 3 is about 9pm. I seem to stay up far too late because after the Lambs go to bed is my only ME time, even if I'm only doing housework that I couldn't seem to get done with the Lambs under foot. Since we gave up TV last January, we have been a little better about going to bed earlier. But here I am, blogging this at midnight, wondering when I will ever have time to do some intellectual reading.
I figure since the Lambs aren't used to getting attention from Ewe first thing in the morning, I'm going to try getting up a 1/2 hour earlier and spend 15 minutes reading my Bible and 15 minutes reading something intellectual. I'm not going to start with anything real heavy-eventually maybe I'll get to that point, but I have a huge stack of books that I'm interested in that I want to try to tackle. And yes, all those books in that stack have some meat to them, they aren't just romance novels. Most are non-fiction of topics I'm interested in.
I think I'll be surprised how much I can get read with just 15 minutes of reading daily. I know it's not the best circumstances because the Lambs will be playing near by. But I will do better reading in the morning, even if the Lambs are there. I will do much better with a schedule.
I do plan to guard my reading time and do this first thing in the morning. I will definitely need to do my reading before I turn on the computer and start reading e-mail or blogs.
I also plan to teach the Lambs that this is my reading time and when I am finished then I will read to them for 15 minutes. We almost always read before bedtime, but we don't always read during the day. As we get more into homeschooling (Lamb 1 is in K this fall), I think this will be good to do some of the reading first thing in the morning. After reading time for all of us then we'll get the cold cereal and turn the computer on etc.
Recently we've been off schedule with vacations and summer activities. I have been trying to do some decluttering and I hope to do some deep cleaning in August. Hopefully I can begin my reading plan on August 3. I don't know if Ram will join me in my reading plan. I'll try to keep you posted how my plan works. Once my reading plan starts, I also plan to try to not stay up so late. I want to be awake when I'm reading the next morning!