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Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Working Mommy Wednesday


How important to you, as a working mom, is a schedule/routine for your kids?

My husband's a stay at home dad and he's super strict with the kids schedule. I often mock him by taking the kids completely off schedule on the weekends so he is left to nudge them back in line on Monday's. With our first, I thought he might be a little overzealous, I mean is it really necessary to require naps so diligently??? I thought maybe he just wanted an excuse to watch movies - right? I would drop helpful suggestions like hey - why don't you take Charlotte here or there for social time. He'd recoil and revolt by completely ignoring every suggestion. It turns out, Charlotte is just fine and has settled into a happy routine of loving her baby bear, enjoying favorite cartoons and commenting loudly on everything her baby brother does or doesn't do.

I've realized the kids crave routine with their father just as much as they like having a wild card parent to break things up on the weekend. They get their kicks with me on Friday and Saturday, we spend Sunday as a family and by Monday they are back in their routine of standard sleeping and eating hours: Sam naps by 10, both kids nap by 2, youngest in bed by 8, oldest by 9pm, meals at 8am, 10am snack, noon lunch, 4pm snack and 6:30pm dinner. He claims he can't take them out much because he's too busy preparing food all day and rocking kids to sleep. I guess with 2 there is less movie time anyway.

As the dominate working parent, I know when to call and when to not call during the day to chat. Anything between 2 and 4 is forbidden unless it's an emergency!

So WMW post became husbands post but he's the one controlling the routines around here so 3 cheers for the dude in the house!! Woot woot!!

1 comment:

amanda said...

I went to read this...and realized I had already done so. I opened your page when visiting the free wifi @ McDonald's...so that I could catch up on reading it later in the day. :)