Now that Atlas is almost four months old, we’re finally starting to form a routine. So far it’s been all about keeping her happy: feeding her when she’s hungry, changing her diaper (or taking her to the potty… more about that later), and getting her to sleep when she needs to. Now our plan is to include regular work time for both me and Ian in our weekly schedule. Here’s how we plan to do it.
What is “work” for us?
First of all, let me explain what “work” typically looks like and requires for us. We run our own business and both work from home. We’re very flexible with our time, but there are a few things that we absolutely need to do each week: fulfilling orders and answering emails. We’ve been able to get those things done pretty easily, even with a newborn.
Then there are things that we should do to keep our business healthy, and things that we want to do to keep ourselves fulfilled and enjoying what we’re doing. Those are the things we’ve taken a break from as we’ve been adjusting to parenting a new baby. Now we’re ready to get back to it, both for our mental health and for a little boost on the money front… because raising kids ain’t cheap, amirite? 🙂
So what’s the new plan with baby?
Even as I’m writing this post, I know it’s going to be tough. My coffee is cold. I did already shower today, but that’s largely because I had to — she threw up on me during her morning feeding.
We’ve already had to tend to Atlas four times in her play gym since I started writing this post. She’s recently begun teething and is quick to get upset when the toy she’s chewing on falls out of her mouth. (Her four-month-old baby hands aren’t yet skilled in the art of keeping things in her mouth.) But we’re learning and making it work better already — even in the last five minutes. She’s now happily sitting in her bouncer next to me with her favorite dog lovey, the toy attachment for her bouncer, and a rubber teether in her mouth. And we’re listening to her favorite playlist.
My plan for a weekly schedule for our family is pretty simple:
- Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday will be our “work” days. Not full 8-hour days. We’re not ready for that yet. But we’ll dedicate 3 hours each day for work.
- Wednesday will be our weekly “personal” day where we get our everyday stuff like cleaning and errands done.
- Weekends will be dedicated family time and will also include errands and cleaning.
The remaining time on each “work” day will be filled with whatever we need or want to fill it with. Likely lots of laundry and hopefully a decent amount of exercise.
We plan to get our three hours of work on our “work” days completed in one-hour blocks. We’ll try to do these during her naps, but reasonably speaking we know we’ll have interruptions, so we’ll just embrace and tend to the interruption and then tack on an extra five or ten minutes to the end of our work hours as needed.
How it’s going so far
The goal of making this schedule is to keep our family happy and healthy, while allowing both Ian and I to raise Atlas together at home.
We’ve only been on this schedule for three days now, but it feels like it’s going to work well! It’s certainly not perfect. We didn’t get all of our “personal” stuff done yesterday. I only managed to run the vacuum (we have a robot) in half of our home. We haven’t exercised since Monday. But we did get a lot more done these last three days than we would have without this plan or schedule.
As we further adjust to our new routine, I feel really confident that we’ll eventually be able to get everything we need to — and most of what we hope to — done each week.
Who has advice?
I’m sure there’s a good chance that lots of people reading this have experience working from home with kids because of the pandemic. If that’s you, leave a comment below and let us know what worked for you! In the spirit of “We’re all in this together” or “it takes a village…” and what have you, lets help each other out. Feel free to share your successes or mishaps below!
Now off I go to feed this cute baby.
Sounds like a good starting plan!