@onkos1 You’ll get into a groove! My work day (always in office) starts at 7 am so I’ve got the kid dropped off at 645 right when they open and then I breeze into work right on time. Two days a week I’m off at 3 and those are the best, I grab her and we go do something fun before dinner like the park or we run errands which works out because she also loves the grocery store. The other days I’m off at 5 so those are much longer and require more advance planning for dinner and downtime but we make it work. It’ll feel overwhelming at first and then it’ll be totally normal.
@allaneparker That's good to hear! I think I'm a little stressed about missing my time just with them to do fun things (the park, children's museum, library, etc.) so maybe I'll schedule something like that after pickup occasionally, depending on how tired they are.
@onkos1 It’ll be fine. My job isn’t flexible, we’ve done fine. LO (18 months, 2nd due in October)goes to daycare 4 days a week, ( I have tues and Sunday off) daddy does Saturdays with her. She’s at daycare 9-5:00 (my shift is 10-6:30) she loves her daycare, they give her a nice structure, she has little friends, in fact she gets annoyed at long weekends cause she wants to go see her friends.
One little piece of advice, I’ve never acted sad with her about her going to daycare, I’ve always put it “let’s go see our friends “
@tabernaculumnus My 4 year old is super social and my almost 1 year old is very interested in other kids/babies as well. I'll frame it as "let's go see our friends" for sure! I really like that idea.
@onkos1 I work in an office 5 minutes from my house, M-F 9-3. Honestly, not bad. My work hours with commute ends up being 8:55-3:05 (bus comes for the kids shortly after 8 so I have time in the morning after they leave and they don't get home until 3:25 so I have some time to myself to unpack/start dinner.) Honestly the after school activities are more brutal than the work part. Daycare is a temporary thing and those hours will also let you be around for bus pick up/drop off when the kids start school.
The one thing I did was reminded my self this was normal pre pandemic. With my older child we used to get up at 6am every day and have to be out the door by 6:40am to get to daycare/work on time and didn't get home until 4:30.
The keys have always been: prep the night before. Literally everything you can prep the night before, you prep. Clothes out, lunches packed in the fridge, bags packed with their needs. The biggest adjustment you'll have is going from 2 days a week working to 5 days a week. Everything you used to do on those extra 3 days will have to be done some other time. However the kids won't be in the house destroying it every second of the day, so it may be less work.
@namaste8715 It sounds like my situation will be identical to yours once my kids start elementary school. The bus will pick up/drop off at those times. That will be nice to have a little time to myself before and after work.
@flybynight4 I brought up my promotion one day while I was working from her house and we talked about the change for probably 2 or so hours. It wasn't a super easy conversation, but I think overall it went well. She absolutely loves spending time with my boys, so luckily she has had 6 months or so to adjust to the idea of it no longer being a twice weekly thing. I really emphasized how excited we were about the Montessori school and all the fun things they would be doing. I also talked about all the benefits of the career move for me, how it would benefit our family financially, etc. and made sure to let her know that we would still love for her to care for the boys during school closures. She was a SAHM to 5 kids and her mom was a SAHM to 11 kids, so my decision to have 2 kids and be a working mom is foreign to her, but to her credit I think she's really trying hard to understand and is coming around to the idea that just because one decision was right for her life doesn't mean it's right for mine. I also left my childhood religion about 5 years ago so she has had practice dealing with me making decisions that are hard for her, haha
