Babble

Working while raising a family can be challenging. How do you juggle everything?

My wife: Up with the Lads at 6:30, leaves for her very challenging teaching job at 9:00, gets home at 2:00, we share duties for a little while, then she takes over until bedtime (7:30-ish).

Me: Wake up at 11:30 p.m. for my night editing job (midnight until 8:00 a.m.), I get home, take the Lads from 9:00-2:00, spend a bit of time together as a family unit, then I theoretically go to sleep.

Everyone thinks we're nuts, superhuman, or some comic-villain combination of the two. 

I love those days whe I actually wake up before the kids and have some time for a shower, if not - up with the kids, breakfast, errands, urgent work email, washing my hair in the sink, leaving baby with nanny, taking dd to school at 9:30, running to the subway to make it to work by 10. and then.... work + household nonsense + phones to the nanny. no time. no breath. but usually fun.

We're supposed to juggle it all? It's not supposed to collapse on us in a soggy heap of reheated dinners, overdue assignments, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" books and exhaustion? Juggling always seemed like a funny way to describe it, as though every duty is neatly packaged to have attention swtiched to it when it lands in our hand. Except usually you're supposed to be hanging onto 6 things at once, smushed together. Usually we manage it by one or the other of us being utterly sleep deprived. We switch off who gets to nap when they should be doing something else every now and then, so it all works out. It's been a rough month, but the schedules should smooth out a bit in the new year. I hope.

It ain't easy.... I freelance, which I thought would be "easy"... yeah THAT'S the word I think I actually said, while having a sweet and cute little baby in the house.  It is not QUITE as "easy" as I had imagined... my 10 1/2 month old shreeks when he's happy and screams when he's not... in other words, I've been blessed with a very active and vocal bouncing (literally) baby boy.

It can be difficult to speak on the phone.  A few people on the other end of the line have paused and asked "What does he want?" to which I reply, "Oh, nothing... he's just partying right now, this is him having fun."  They seemed a bit horrified!

I'm so not holding it together though I have a good game face. Just tonight the kids were getting on my last ragged nerve and I lost it at them. And dinner was a half-hour late.

 And I'm one of the lucky ones - I work part time out of my home at a job I love.
 

I delegate,delegate, delegate. I am super organized. I ask for help when i need it. I co-parent with my DH. I am present with my children when I am with them: not cleaning the house when i could be on the rug with them. I remind myself of priorities daily. I do without material things sometimes in favor of spiritual and emotional gains. I do not think what I do is extraordinary--nor do I waste a lot of time thinking about if I can "juggle" it all or not--I just take each day as it comes, do the best with what I have where I am.

I work from home, so I really do have to juggle. I write lists (not compulsively, but as helpful reminders) and make sure that we both understand what needs to get done on a given day or during the week. It makes life move more smoothly and ensures we don't have the "But YOU were supposed to buy the milk!" arguement.

I am a dad so i may be speaking out of place but i will say nonetheless that my wife and i alternate mornings and evenings with the kid. i go to the gym every day (well, most days) at lunch time and eat a salad at my desk. we each take a personal night with friends every week or two. and in theory we do a weekly date night out; in practice once per month.

i don't put in as much time at work or at home as i would like to, but i have learned to see this as a challenge to make the time i do have as efficient (at work) and as meaningful (at home) as possible given the allocated time. i could not do this without the exercise (and i say this as someone without a history of either masachism or athleticism). and i remind myself to avoid blaming my wife for frustrations that are basically endemic to the parenting/working experience for everyone (though we both periodicaly fall into this rut).

i see my days as recurring efficiency challenges -- i listen to books on tape while walking to work; type emails in the elevator; teach myself to juggle while playing with our 22 month old; and so on. this may sound obsessive compulsive to some; to me it's a way of making the daily challenges fun and making sure that i retain a relationship to myself and my interests while trying to have a good relationships with my work, son and work. 

 and all this with just one kid ! lord help us when the second arrives ;)

 

I have stayed home for the past 13 years to raise our three kids. It was often a struggle but worth it.

Last fall my youngest started school all day so I felt this huge super woman power to return to work. I was a little wigged out by managing that and the kids (schedule) not to mention the house.

I really admire people who can do it. I couldn't take being a pre/school teacher (I am a nurse by trade) any longer and left at Christmas break. In the mean time I had started using a swiss skin care

and fell in love with it. It also works so well that I decided to work from home selling it.

It's so much more sane on "me" and gives me that option to be involved in everything and still have the opportunity.

My husband works for his family business (which is very successful) he can juggle things around to be a "helping" dad but it's nice to be "mom" even as they grow older.

Does it get easier? Sure, but they get so busy.

 

If anyone is interested in learning more about swiss skin care/working from home (not investing a lot) I have tons of samples to try/share etc.

I'd be happy to talk to you. kel@h-power.us

 

To the people juggling it all. Wow! 

It's really, really hard.

I'm the one to get up in the middle of the night, even if PK is working from home that day. So I could be up half a dozen times and still have to be on when I get into work.

I love, love, love bringing home a paycheck, as small as it may be. And I love getting a break from being "on" ... although being at work is different, I feel like I can, for a short while, be "me" again. When I get to work, I hit the ground running and don't stop.

I take advantage of PK being home on the weekends and try to get stuff done first thing in the morning when baby G and I get up. Otherwise ... I'm not sure how I'm juggling everything. I just am, because I have to.

jenerally:

I'm not sure how I'm juggling everything. I just am, because I have to.

Folks ask me how I manage working full-time nights and also being the sole caregiver for the Lads 5-8 hours per day...  I never know how to respond, except to say, "Lack of an alternative frame of reference."  Perhaps if it hadn't always been this way since they arrived, it would seem difficult, but I have nothing else to compare it to.
 

Our typical day..
I'm up at 5:45 to shower and dress. My husband is up at 6:15 to do the same and I wake our daughter up at 6:30 if she's not already found her way into our room by that point. I lay everything out the night before including breakfast bowls and tea cups with bags and sugar already in!  Thankfully, our four year old is already in school and wears a uniform - so we don't have to haggle over what to wear every day.

Husband and child drop me off at the Tube station on the way to her school at 7:45. He parks our car outside her school and takes the train to work after dropping her at 8:30. She goes to school until 3pm and then the after school club until I pick her up (after another train journey) at 5:30. She and I are home by 6:30 and my husband gets in around 6:45.  Then it's reading, dinner, bath and bed. She's usually asleep by 7:45.

As for the everyday life things ... well, I have a housekeeper, internet banking, bills on direct debit and I order my groceries on the internet for delivery late at night (gosh bless Ocado and their one hour delivery slots at 10pm!). I do all my running of the household (bills, etc) at work while eating lunch at my desk. My husband and I find it easiest if only one of us deals with the administrative duties - and hey, that's me as I'm far more organised and anxious than he. So everything that comes in gets dealt with and filed away. Of course, if I need to reference anything it all lives at the office!

It's an interesting way to live - but we enjoy it and it seems to work for us. We have to make an effort to show my daughter a grocery store every now and again - for a while she just thought the fridge filled up again overnight!
-elizabeth

We chose two part-time jobs with opposing schedules (I work 8am-1pm, my husband works 1:30pm-6pm).  We also both do a bit of freelance work that gets fitted in whenever we can.  That way we both have the satisfaction of careers and out-of-the-house time, and we both have the joy of caring for our son and being with him every day.  It does mean sacrificing a lot because we have a minimal income and no benefits, but we feel it's worth it.

I worked full time until my twins were 14 months old and I was laid off.  Since then I have been at home and running my own very very small business from home.  I just can't afford the $3K a month it would cost me to have my kids in nursery school all day.  Once all 3 kids are in a full day of school I can go back to work.

Thinking about getting my nursing degree.