flea

Or whole after-work dinner-bedtime routine is not working right now, so I thought I'd talk it out and see if I can find any ways to fix it. Constructive suggestions welcomed.

We all get home together at about 5:30, give or take. The last leg of the drive home (4 blocks from school) can be a little hairy, as Dillo wants to come in and get Casper from after school with me, but then generally protests being put back in the car seat for the drive home. He wants to be held. When we get home, I get him out of the car and we generally go inside and nurse first thing, in the pink chair. He wants about 15 minutes of my attention at this point, and woe bedtide the woman who forgot to pee before leaving work. My natural instinct on coming home is to want to shed my work clothes and unpack bags (lunchboxes, papers coming home from Casper school) and I usually do this after we finish the nursing session. What is Casper doing at this point? Playing, sometimes outside. If she's outside, mr. flea is with her; if she's not and it's his dinner night, he is making dinner.

We've been doing rigorous meal planning for Mon-Thurs for the last couple of weeks and it has been working okay. We pick meals, shop on Sunday, and pick who makes the meal, and then stick to the schedule. One problem is I am often very hungry when we get home. I want dinner by 6 at the latest, and mr. flea isn't that invested in getting dinner out fast. A solution is to go right to snacks, never mind that dinner is in half an hour. Maybe I can grab a snack before nursing Dillo, so I have some time to get calories in me? Or pack a granola bar to eat at 4:30 at work?

A big problem is we are both tired in the evenings, and the kids need a lot of input of energy to keep from going off the rails (they are tired too, of course). We don't bathe them every day, and we don't stick to a strict timeline for bedtime, although we have a general routine: play, then bath if it's a bath night, then stories, nursing, lights off. Someone has to lie with Dillo until he's asleep, or else he'll a) cry and b) leave his room and come find us. Casper likes to have someone lie with her, and we generally do. I'd say about 70% of the time, one or the other of us falls asleep with one of the kids. Neither of them ever get to sleep before 9, which is WAY too late. I'd prefer 8. I'd also prefer it if getting them down didn't take the full energy of both of us.

What can help? Try, for starters, to have an 8:30 lights off, and start the routine by 7:30 at the latest (7 for bath nights). Story time always takes a lot longer than we think it will. Tell myself that if I invest the energy into getting them down reliably earlier, I will have the time for personal stuff after they are asleep. For a while last winter they were both down by 8pm, and it rocked. I read books!