My husband and I work full-time jobs in Corporate America. That means that we send our little Evie to daycare - specifically a Montessori school down the street from our house. We follow a strict schedule to keep the work and home life balanced.
8:00: We all wake up (if Evie lets us sleeps in), one parent head downstairs with Evie for breakfast, do the morning routine, and get Evie's lunch ready. The other parent gets 1/2 hr to get ready for work. At the 8:30 mark, we swap and the other parent finish getting Evie ready (brush teeth, get dressed, pack for school.)
9:00 - 9:15: We head out the door and drop Evie off at school. My husband and I carpool and spend about 1/2 hour in traffic. Sometimes we talk about work, about Evie, about our lives. Sometimes we argue about house chores. Sometimes we sit in a comfortable silence.
9:45 - 5:00: Work. Hard stop at 5:00. We have a reminder on our calendars to drop whatever we're doing and pack up.
5:00 - 5:30: Carpool back to Montessori. We get charge a late fee if we arrive after 6PM - this is standard across all daycare. We leave at 5PM to factor in traffic. Plus we don't want Evie to be the last kid to get picked up. It's lonely and scary when all your friends go home and you're waiting for your parents, not knowing when they'll show up.
5:45: We get home. Dinner starts. I take a 20 minute shower while Husband hangs out with Evie. Husband starts dinner.
6:15: I come down and help with dinner - usually take over dinner. Evie plays or watch TV, depending on her mood.
7:45: We all sit down and eat together.
7:30: Husband takes Evie upstairs for a bath. I take the time to clean the dinner table, prep food for the next day, and prep Evie's lunch.
8:00: We hang out or watch a little TV. Evie plays for an hour.
8:30: We get Evie ready for bed: Brush her teeth and read books. One parent lays with Evie until she falls asleep. (We don't believe in Crying It Out.)
9:00 - 9:30: Evie is asleep and we both fire up our computers and work until we're tired, usually between 11 and midnight.
Repeat 5 times a week.
This gets even harder when one of us has an early morning meeting (usually me.) I end up leaving at 8 and sometimes I don't even get to see Evie wake up before I have to head out.
Because of this, because we don't believe in Crying It Out, because I was raised in a Third World Country, because we believe in our parental instincts, we all sleep in the same bed. We work so much that having her next us, even when we're asleep, means more time together. Squeezing out every moment together is the name of the game.
We've had the family bed from day one and it works for us. One day we will transition Evie to her bed when she's ready. We try every few months to see if she's ready but she ends up wake up about two hour into her sleep because we're not next to her. I usually have to carry her back to my bed to get her to go back to sleep. Evie accepts that our bed is her bed and we accept the same.
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