Month 10 Daily Routine
At ten months old, things have really started to click for me and babygirl. We’ve got a reliable schedule, a variety of options for playing and exploring, and frequent mid-day opportunities to hang out with Mom.
Here’s what a day generally looks like for us.
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A Typical Day
We approach the day as four chunks of time / wake windows:
Morning: 6:30 to 9:15am
Midday: 10:30 to 2:00pm
Evening: 15:30 to 6:30pm
Bedtime: 6:30 to 7:00pm
The morning and midday wake windows go roughly like this:
wake up and reorient
diaper change
free play
meal
play or outing
bottle or nurse
diaper change
back to sleep
On most evenings, Mom is done working when Toby wakes up from her afternoon nap, so I may get a break. And Toby waits to have her meal with us; I aim to have dinner served around 5:00pm. Mom and baby have a longer play window while I cook.
Notes
**Sleep:** We’re on two naps, aiming for 14-15 total hours of sleep each day.[^1][^2]
Meals: We shoot for three “real food” meals a day (one for each wake window). We spend upwards of 30 minutes in the high chair for each meal, as Toby works on her pinch-and-eat skills.
Bottles: Each wake window gets a 4-to-5 ounce bottle of milk or formula. Unless Mom is free to nurse! Bedtime gets another bottle, bringing us to four over the day.
Free play: We like exploring the house, opening doors, “reorganizing” shelves, and trying to make friends with the cats. Toby is a climber and a stander, so Mom and I have set up a bunch of opportunities for her to pull herself up onto her feet and have a look around (upside-down storage bins, a sticky wall, safe access to the couch, etc.).
Playing together: I let Toby start each play session on her own, but if she keeps coming to me or looking like she wants to interact, I play with her. Maybe I’ll stack some blocks, or put away the things she’s throwing on the ground. Sometimes we sing songs. Sometimes I pick her up to do some airplaning. She loves it when Mom and I pretend to be a dog :)
Outings: When we’re out of the house, Toby likes to be worn in the carrier more than sitting in the stroller. Everywhere we go is exciting, but we can crawl around and play at the library so that’s probably the favorite. She lights people up, but doesn’t yet do a great job responding to my encouragement to say hello to folks.
Back to sleep: Toby has been pretty willing to stick to our schedule, but sometimes she gives me sleepy signals before we reach the designated nap time. If she’s crawling to me and asking to be held, then rubbing her eyes or snuggling into my chest, we skip forward to the nap. And going down for a nap has its own little routine, which I will outline in another post!
