What time of day do you head in to work? Is it the same time every day? What's your process for getting out the door? Do you just get up and go? Shower the night before? Do you make breakfast, read the paper...?
My wife and I have three kids. Two of them (5 and 3) have to get to preschool, and the baby is pretty strict on when he wants to be fed. So our system goes something like this:
- Baby wakes up at 5am for a bottle, so I seize the opportunity to take a scan at email and RSS feeds to know what's waiting for me.
- Feed baby, go back to sleep.
- Wake up around 6:30 and try to catch 5-10 minutes of news (weather, traffic) before the 3yr old wakes up and wants to watch Dora.
- Take a shower. Shave. (My wife takes her shower in the evenings.)
- Make the beds while my wife gets out clothes for the kids. This includes waking up the 5yr old if she's not up yet. Easy way to do that is to make the bed with her still in it, she hates that.
- Team work as we each grab a child and get them dressed and ready for the day.
- I start the laundry downstairs while my wife does the kids' hair and brushes their teeth.
- While I'm downstairs, get my laptop shutdown, packed up and ready to. If I have time, try to put together a quick breakfast to take on the road.
- If I'm ahead of schedule, help get the kids downstairs and started on breakfast.
- Line up children and wife for goodbye kisses. Actually, "chase them down one by one" is more accurate. Except for the 3yr old who is adamantly yelling "Don't forget to give me kiss!" as I'm getting closer to getting out the door.
- Out the door by 7:35.
Keep in mind that I catch an 8:15 train, so it's pretty crucial that I hit that window just right. Too early and I'm sitting around at the station with no productive time at all, but too much time spent at home and I miss the train altogether.
The most important thing is working together to get everything done to the best of your abilities. For instance, I'm lousy at picking out clothes for my daughters. Seriously, my oldest is 5 years old and I've never managed to pick something on the first try that my wife approves. So instead I simply don't even try. I do the tasks I'm good at (or, at least, capable of doing) and my wife does what she's good at, and we both get where we need to be.
2 comments:
I actually wrote a post about this particular subject a little while ago, but it's more on the funny (or at least what I hope to be funny) side than on the practical side.
The truth is, our mornings are more stressful than they should be, and could be better organized. I'm up at 6:30 but rarely manage to get out of the house before 8:00.
The one thing that does work for me is preparing as much as I can the night before: cloths for the kids, their school bags, even my own clothes sometime.
Here's what we do at our best:
Prepare part of our lunches for the next day during dinner prep (raw veggies and dip, crackers, whatever); the rest of our lunch is dinner leftovers, and it's all put together by the time kitchen cleanup is done.
Also that night, my wife picks out two outfits for our toddler to choose from the next morning.
5:15 AM: I get up, shower, feed the dog (my daughter loves to help, but it takes a lot longer that way), then write and/or blog.
7:00 AM: Wake up wife and daughter. Rapid morning routine commences:
- Change clothes while daughter is still sleepy
- Share a yogurt drink (her must-have ritual)
- Daughter takes morning meds
- Eat quick breakfast together, usually cereal
- Potty time somewhere in there
- Have weird, drawn-out, distracting conversations
- Remind her to eat her cereal before she has to go
I'm out the door by 7:40 to get to work at 8:00. Mom then handles teeth brushing, getting daycare gear together if needed, putting up hair, and getting out the door. If my daughter's having a rough morning they might sit and watch a video together for 15 minutes.
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