Annual Back to School Extravaganza!

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:08
Speaker 2: And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:17
Speaker 3: Welcome to best of both worlds.

00:00:19
Speaker 1: Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:32
Speaker 3: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:35
Speaker 1: This is our back to school episode, which alert listeners know we have been doing for many years now. We've gone through a great many grade levels and added additional children. Sarah now has a kindergartener who was not even with us, you know, outside Sarah when this podcast began. So, Sarah, why don't you give our listeners a quick rundown of where your kids are in you know, age, why, and how your logistics are for the start of this back to school season.

00:01:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, my kids are currently at kindergarten, fourth grade, and sixth grade, which I do feel is a little bit of a milestone parenting year. In that I don't have anyone in preschool anymore. However, in reality, it's a little bit less dramatic or anti a little bit anti climactic compared to what that might feel like, because, as I've discussed, my kids go to a Montessori school and for the youngest age group the three year olds to age six, so all the way from pre K three to kindergarten essentially are in the same classroom. So while this sounds really momentous and I know kindergarten start is a really big deal for a lot of kids, for Genevie if it was just like I get to go back to my same friends, my same teacher. The only difference is that this year she gets to take field trips, so that's I've been kind of playing that up as something exciting to look forward to. And then Cameron also switched classrooms. They are all at the same school, which goes from preschool to eighth grade. He is now in the class that annabel just spent two years in, so that's kind of interesting. And then Annabelle is in middle school. So I feel like if anybody has had their biggest shift this year, it's her. A little different than my middle school experience growing up, because their school is tiny, which I think has some major benefits and some major downsides. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes this year, and I'm just trying to enter it with an open mind and hoping it works out because the logistics are just so wonderful. It's one drop off, one pickup, and the times are not in sync, so the younger kids start almost an hour earlier than the oldest kids, and the oldest kids finished almost an hour later. But they do provide complimentary aftercare for the little kids as long as you have an older siblings. So essentially Genevieve is spending an extra hour at school that we don't have to pay for and gets picked up at almost four o'clock most days, So that's a little bit of an adjustment too.

00:02:59
Speaker 3: Wow. Well, at least it's logistically convenient.

00:03:02
Speaker 1: I mean, that's three kids in the same school is definitely a nice thing, and they've certainly sound like they've thought about it.

00:03:07
Speaker 3: What would be the sticking points? I mean, that would just.

00:03:09
Speaker 1: Be so terrible if like the lower school and upper school had different drop ups and they're like, yeah, you're on your own sorry, just go hang out in our parking lot for thirty minutes.

00:03:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that it would be a problem. And also, just to remind listeners, the school is located on my way to work, so there is kind of more than one logistics benefit to our choice there.

00:03:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:03:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we are My five children are going to be a junior in high school, eighth grade, sixth grade, third grade, and pre K. Everyone though, is in the same school that they were last year. So last year we had two kids starting new schools and Henry was starting school for the first time, and well three kids because my two middle schoolers, there was a new middle school that opened in our district and we were our district guide lines. I don't know how you how do you say it?

00:04:03
Speaker 2: Like?

00:04:03
Speaker 1: You know, we were in that catchment area. So we had to switch schools for the older one and then Ruth started. They switched from being six to eight to being five to eight. How this all played out? So anyway, they spent fifth and seventh grade at this school, and now they will be sixth and eighth grade at the same school, so that's not as huge a change. So I'm hoping everything will be pretty much the same in terms of the bus times we are given, so you know when jazz band will be meeting hopefully you know, in the morning, at the same days or even something. I mean, we'll work it out, but I think logistically a lot of stuff will be the same, so no major schedule changes, which is good. I think there's going to be a lot of shifts over the years, as you know. Well, next year Sam will start high school and there will be changes, but right now we don't have as many, so kind of looking forward to that. We're not in school yet. When this is airing, Sarah's been in school for like a week and a half. We were like, yeah, you know, we don't start till after Labor Day, so I take this back to school, as you will wherever you are in the process.

00:05:07
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think about whether there will ever be a moment you have five kids in five different schools. It might be right college, I.

00:05:15
Speaker 3: Mean middle school, when Jasper goes to college.

00:05:19
Speaker 1: So his freshman year of college, Sam will be a sophomore. Ruth will be in eighth grade, but Alex will be in fifth grade, so he'll be in school with Ruth, so we won't be all separate at.

00:05:33
Speaker 3: That point, they're not quite so spread out that that would happen.

00:05:39
Speaker 2: Totally fascinating and sounds incredibly challenging from my kind of easier vantage point. So in terms of like kind of school morning type nanny type logistics, are you kind of sticking to the same schedule as last year?

00:05:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, with the.

00:05:57
Speaker 1: One caveat that I'm hoping to start work earlier. So this past year I often wound up helping with the sort of Alex and Henry getting ready time, and you know, it's one of those things that like they could sleep until eight basically, so I had no desire to kind of wake them up earlier if they were still asleep. But Henry in particular was always very He's a little you know, wants mommy in the morning, and so then I wound up kind of being with him while or nanny was helping Alex get ready and get breakfast and get you ready for school and all that, and then they would leave at eight forty and then I would start work. But I'm like, well, I think this year, especially since Henry's going to be in school nine to twelve, five mornings a week, to sort of feel like I justify having the nanny coverage in the morning. I want to start work closer to eight when she gets there, which means that I probably just need to get Henry up earlier, Like if I get him up at seven forty five, if he's not already a wake which sometimes he was, but if he was awake seven forty five, then I could do, you know, fifteen minutes with him, get him kind of starting the day, and then so when she came, I could transition to my office and get the benefit of having her there for you know, because people like, well, why are you doing that if your kids are in school from nine to at least nine to noon. But the problem is if she came at noon, one of us couldn't really start work until like nine fifteen, nine twenty, when we're back from the preschool drop off.

00:07:33
Speaker 3: And it's like, that's a lot of time that I'm not you know, me or Michael, but probably me more often. I don't know.

00:07:41
Speaker 1: I don't want to give up that eight to nine fifteen productive time, so I need to make sure I'm using it, though.

00:07:49
Speaker 2: I get it, especially if you're more likely to have the end of the day truncated by kid related things. You don't want to give it up at both ends.

00:07:56
Speaker 1: So yeah, that and we really, I mean, we can't not have the full time coverage anyway just because we're I mean, we both do stuff, like, we both have things we have to be places, and so then it just doesn't work to not have an adult there in the morning or available. But I want to make sure I'm using the time that I do have, So that's my goal. We'll see how it plays out.

00:08:18
Speaker 2: I love it. Well, we were going to talk about well, I guess I'll give you my nanny logistics, and then we're going to talk about lunches because that's always fun and exciting. But we're not making any big changes in that area. But compared to this summer, she definitely starts significantly later and sometimes ends significantly later than the summer. So generally Josh or I meet eighty percent of the time, usually four mornings a week do school drop off, and then that means that she can basically just get them for pickup, which as I said, is pretty late. She often comes in earlier than that, like at noon or one to do some house related stuff or grocery shop or things like that, but she doesn't have to start her day early, which is great because as we'll get to we have a lot of evening activities and sometimes I do need help because two kids may have to be in different places at once, or I don't want to drag all three kids to the soccer field that's everyone's least favorite activity, and so she doesn't mind kind of shifting her day later, and that's going to work, I think, really well for us this year.

00:09:17
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the evening coverage with the activities is definitely going to be something for us.

00:09:22
Speaker 3: Not so much that any given night it's terrible, but we do have stuff.

00:09:26
Speaker 1: I mean, Alex is going to be swimming two nights a week, you know, Sam has fencing. Jasper and I are actually going to be singing in choir together. It appears, you know, fingers crossed that's going to work out. But he sang in the summer choir with me a few times and liked it.

00:09:43
Speaker 3: And it's, as we.

00:09:45
Speaker 1: Joke about its, people always want a tenor, so we have a willing tenor is a good thing. So hopefully that's going to work out that we'll both be singing together on Thursday nights. But then that means, you know, I was not available, and now he's not going to be available to stay with Henry or anything, so we definitely will have to work out the coverage on that as well. Oh but that's so worth it.

00:10:06
Speaker 2: I love I love that that's going to be such a fun I mean, assuming he continues to love it, like what a great memory and experience.

00:10:12
Speaker 1: No, I think it's good. I always have my designs. There's a potential choir tour in the works for early next summer, which I'm like, figures cross would be fun, you know, an international tour, and I can go with my kid as my roommate.

00:10:24
Speaker 2: So that is awesome. Oh my gosh. I can't wait to hear more details about that, and I hope it goes really really well.

00:10:32
Speaker 3: So school lunch, yes, So.

00:10:38
Speaker 2: I don't know. I was thinking that we were going to make more use of the like catered lunch provided not by the school but by like an outside company, and then I went to buy it. It was like nine fifty a kid for like a hot dog, and I have three kids and then five days a week and I'm like, that's one hundred and fifty dollars a week and I still have to pack their snacks. And I'd still have to remember to order their lunch, and then some kids would want it, some kids wouldn't want it, And I'm like, you know what, too much work for that amount of money to justify doing it. So I think we're going to continue to generally pack lunch. We've been delving more into the warming things up and putting it in the thermos because actually it's a nice way to use leftovers and is easier than I kind of expected it might be. And Annabeal makes her own lunch. I have not pushed that upon camera, despite the fact that he's passed the Laura vandercam age of lunch making. But our nanny does help with that Tuesday through Friday, so it's probably why there is no fire lint under me to have him do it. It works.

00:11:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, this is the upside of a public school is that nobody's charging ten dollars for a lunch. I think there would be an uproar over that actually get free breakfast in our state now, So if the kids show up early, they could just go to the cafeteria and grab breakfast, which you know, we've often fed them before they left too. But it's like a morning snack for you know that they can even kind of have with them or whatever.

00:12:01
Speaker 3: But it's just a little benefit there.

00:12:05
Speaker 1: But yeah, the older three order lunch, which is not as pricey as that, although it's not you know, it was free for like three years with COVID and then that went on, but it's not as.

00:12:19
Speaker 3: Cheap as I remember it being.

00:12:21
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously inflation hits everywhere, but there's also just a la carte items as well. And so I know, for instance that Jasper likes to get the fruit cups, you know, lunch, and I'm not gonna be like no, no, no, don't get the fruit cup, you know. So anyway he will have that, and I'm watching their balances go down as the time goes on.

00:12:40
Speaker 3: I wind up putting in money probably every six weeks.

00:12:45
Speaker 1: Or so, which you know, I could do more money and less frequently, but I'm always just like, oh, I don't know. Anyway, it's a thing. But Alex is gonna pack his lunch. He tends to just it's mostly like snacky stuff anyway, like a yogurt, a string cheese, crackers, or some sort of bread and raisins. So it's pretty easy and modular. And not that challenging to put together. I think if he was doing like a tuna fish sandwich, that would be more complicated or you know, soups. But it's the same thing every day. It's pretty easy, so he'll be doing that. And then of course Henry is nine to twelve, so no lunch involved in that for him yet.

00:13:22
Speaker 2: Nice. Nice. And I've also found out recently that I don't have to be peanup for you for any of my kids, so I feel like that opens up a whole window of really really easy lunch options.

00:13:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ruth was occasionally packing lunch or packing snack, but I found I don't think they have a requirement. But one of her good friends like has some allergy, so she packs according to that, so very.

00:13:43
Speaker 2: Go totally totally.

00:13:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:13:44
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm all for respecting whenever there's rules, like, I always follow them, but they're like, there's no allergies, so yeah, yeah, Well.

00:13:50
Speaker 1: Why don't we take a quick break and then we'll be back with a little bit more on how back to school schedules are working for us and any advice we have for anyone else, Not that you need to listen to us on, but hey, we've been through it a few times. All right, here, we'll take a quick ad break. All right, Well, we are back with our annual back to school special, which I realized, like we're talking more about what we're doing, and you can take it or leave it. I don't know if we have great advice for back to school season, such as it is, but Sarah, what's your thought on We know what your thought is family dinners during the school week.

00:14:36
Speaker 2: I don't have negative thoughts about family dinners or anything. I mean, I think they sound lovely. They just aren't something we've been able to make a priority for us, in part because of my husband's work schedule. So again, it's just he is not going to reliably be home at a dinner hour necessarily, and that unpredictability kind of makes it feel a little bit like a waste. Like if we're all planning to eat dinner together and then it doesn't happen like forty to sixty percent of the time or something, then it maybe you're just better off, like not hoping for that specifically, But also, we have a number of new sports commitments and things, and many of those fall right around the traditional dinner hour, which, as we talked about I think in a previous Q and A. You can look at that in two different ways. You can look at that as, oh man, how annoying that's messing with my sacriscanc dinner hour, or you can look at it as wow, for working parents who don't have someone able to drive their kids, like, isn't it great that there are things available that are a little bit more inclusive. All that said, it is actually hard for me, Like Cameron soccer starts at five point forty five, but it's across town, so it's hard for me to actually make the beginning of that. And then we've got like dance two nights a week, gymnastics two nights a week, and I thought we were gonna have a free night on Tuesdays, but then that went away because one kid switch from one other thing. So there's like something almost every night, which means dinner is going to be quick Monday through Thursday. But we enjoy family dinner on the weekends almost always on Sunday, always on Saturday unless we're going out either as a family or if Josh and I are going by ourselves. And Fridays, I almost always eat with the kids because he often works late, but at least that's kind of like a halfway there kind of a thing. So I don't know, it's not all or nothing. Three days a week is a habit. So hey, we almost have a habit of family dinners, even though we don't do them Monday through.

00:16:24
Speaker 1: Thursday, absolutely three times a week as a habit. Yeah, I'm trying to be a little bit more organized about it. I think there's getting all seven of us at the table at the same time is not going to happen every night by any means. But the thing is, you know, five people is still a pretty big dinner. You know, six people is still a pretty big dinner. So I think from that perspective, it's gonna be a lot of semi family dinners in the course of the weekend. So we try to figure out what is the time that the majority of people could sit down and eat something and then whoever is not there or can get a helping of it later or could have something.

00:17:03
Speaker 3: Earlier, or whatever it is that worked for that.

00:17:06
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be a little bit more organized on meal planning, just so we have the stuff and it's not like this ordeal. What are we going to eat, and the kids also ask, you know, it's one of those things that they want to know what am I going to eat tonight? And I guess they can deserve to know that, So, I mean, it's often been something like Monday is pasta, Tuesday is tacos or fajitos or something like that. Wednesday we often have breakfast for dinner. Thursday, our home manager cooks in the morning. Something that's often the crock pot for us Friday is make your own pizza, you know, and then the weekends we grill something or make something a little bit more more complicated, or go out or something like that.

00:17:47
Speaker 3: But one of the reasons we did choose Alex's swim.

00:17:51
Speaker 1: Time he's going to be six forty five to seven thirty, is that it would allow us to eat at like six on those nights, which usually even if the cad have the older kids have activities, they'd like leave on the four to thirty bus and be home for fifty or even if it was you know, five thirty, somebody could pick them up then five twenty whatever it is, and be you know, we can eat it six o'clock and then go for the evening round.

00:18:13
Speaker 3: So just trying to sort of short this out.

00:18:16
Speaker 1: That there is a window somewhere between five thirty and seven, a window of at least twenty minutes where it might be possible for a group of people to sit down together.

00:18:27
Speaker 2: So totally makes sense. I love it, and I'm not anti meal planning by any I love meal planning. I oh, I cannot go into the week without knowing what we're having for dinner. It's just that we don't necessarily attempt to sit down and all eat it. At the same time, it's more interest Well, I.

00:18:41
Speaker 3: Mean, you can go into a week without knowing what you're going to beat.

00:18:44
Speaker 2: I prefer not to go into a week. Yes, and I either I love using Preptish, which they are a best laid planned sponsor, but I actually really it's like a list where you basically have your shopping list and your recipes and you can do a lot of the prep either on Sundays or a lot of times our nanny does it on Mondays, and that it's like done for the week. It's not one of those things where you're like making a bunch of freezer meals. It's more like you put together a sauce on Sunday or Monday that you're going to use for Monday and Wednesday's meal and stuff like that. It's actually like put together very efficiently and it's pretty healthy, so we use that a lot. And then also our We've had some meal kit sponsors that I've enjoyed using in the past on really busy weeks as well.

00:19:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, always a great idea. Yeah, I mean, we often get questions from people who seem to be putting a lot of time into cooking and even into thinking about it as well, which we want to just say, like that may be a source of a place where you couldn't maybe limit some mental bandwidth and not have terrible meals by any means, but just keeping it simple, which is what we do. Like it's very very simple to make spaghetti and sauce, right and like cut up some fruit on the side, or tacos like you just you know, brown meat and you're to put out the toppings. Like these are all very very simple things to do, and so the cooking process is like a twenty minute sort of thing that night, which means it's not an ordeal in the way that I feel like sometimes some of the questions we're getting from people imply that cooking for a family would need to be so something to look into, and it's a topic we will continue to revisit because we get that question so many times. But all right, Sarah, let's talk about homework. Homework in the back to school era. I mean, your kids are still relatively young as this goes, So what are you doing with this?

00:20:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, Genevieve doesn't have homework. That's good. She's not at one of those schools where they're giving kindergartener's homework, So yay, one kid I don't have to think about at all with the homework, so that is good. The other two, So the school is really big on doing longer term stuff with the idea that it helps kids to manage their time. So they almost never have like a worksheet designed for the next day, or like math problems assigned for the next day. Cameron's class, which was an animal's class, so I know the routine. It's always weekly, so they'll have like a bunch of stuff that they get on Thursday, they have to turn it in the next Thursday, and from when I'm gleaning from the middle school, it's more like big projects unless that kind of like daily busy work. Plus you know, now, I feel like middle schools when you have to when most people learn, not all people, but that like, oh, I can study for a test and that will make a difference. Annabel didn't have grades for the last couple of years. They don't have them in emale elementary school what they do in the middle school. And as silly as it is, like, I do feel like she probably is going to care a little bit, so it'll be, you know, up to her to kind of develop habits that support performing at the level that she wants to. I don't want to sit over my kids and help with homework. They wish that I would do this. They request this, especially one of them. I'm not going to specify, but I do feel like I want to help them plan their homework so that especially for the family's benefit, so that we don't have like a panicked child on Wednesday night that hasn't started anything, that's having a total freak out. I mean, I guess the truth is I could let that happen a couple times and then have them not do their homework and get yelled out by their teacher, and maybe they would figure it out. But I think it's also like worth to be like, here's a whiteboard, why don't you think about writing stuff down and give them at least some tools to play with to maybe help them budget their time, since it's something that I feel very passionate about. And they can take those tools or leave them, and so yeah, I guess I see my role more as like providing tools to help them manage their time and resources, not stand over them while they do it. And I don't really plan on I mean I never did with Annabel. I never checked what she was doing, So I don't really want to start unless I hear that there's a problem from a teacher.

00:22:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that.

00:22:50
Speaker 1: I mean, because the homework, again, it's for them. It's not like we already did eighth grade.

00:22:56
Speaker 3: We made it through. It's not about whether we can do it. The goal is always that the child.

00:23:02
Speaker 1: Wants to be successful in these classes, and I think they have to develop the motivation to get there. So I'll occasionally ask one particular child like do you have any homework? But it turns out like a lot of times they've done stuff in class, like they have extra time or you know, a study hall or something, and some people are very motivated by the idea of not taking work home. Eventually it becomes impossible, and I think people go through a period of adjustment there where they realize that it is you're going to have to take work home as a successful student in hard classes. But they have to kind of get their heads around that too, and you, as a parent can sort of suggest the idea that, oh, well, you know, sometimes people find it helpful to spend a little bit of time reviewing things before major quizzes. But eventually they kind of figure that out on their own if they care and if they're around other children who are motivated too. But yeah, so I'm I'm always trying to be as hands off as possible. Alex gets homework and he needs a little bit more guidance to do it, but I'm hoping that this year that's less the case. I think we're going to try and work out something where he remembered or has a time where he commits to doing it, and then all I'll do is just ask if you've done it, because yeah, I mean, I think the teachers also, it's kind of between them and their teachers, and their teachers can express disappointment in them too, like, Oh, it's interesting because I know, seemed like such a curious, smart kid and you're not turning in your homework.

00:24:33
Speaker 3: I wonder what's up with that?

00:24:34
Speaker 1: And you know, then maybe that doesn't feel so good and that's something that you want to be supportive, but you also want them to develop the skills.

00:24:40
Speaker 3: I don't know, That's just my take on it.

00:24:43
Speaker 2: I'm also very pro outside tutor, which is something I didn't necessarily know and I haven't done tons of this with my kids, but I find it as a parent, helping them with things can be really fraud and not necessarily the best for relationships. And so if I I know what is the kids struggling in a particular area, I have like found an expert. And honestly, if you find someone that is like engaging, then they don't even hate it and it preserves that portion of the relationship. So if you have a kid that's like struggling to like write out a sentence without having a fit, then you may want to seek outside assistance.

00:25:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:25:23
Speaker 1: Well, even if they're I mean, we probably many of our listeners are in competitive schools, districts, et cetera. Even if your kid is pretty good at a topic, you may wind up giving them a little boost, particularly as we get toward For any of our listeners who are not like using calculus on a daily basis, I'm sure that's not anyone, right, You're all using calculus on a daily but if you're not, for instance, you may find it increasingly difficult to help your children, even if they did have questions, which you know, you always say like, okay, well there's resources out there. You go to con Academy, you go to whatever else, and you know, watch a video of them explaining the topic. But a tutor can help with as well as somebody who is, for instance, a former math teacher and is doing this on the side might be helpful.

00:26:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm much more pro tutor as I think I thought I was going to be with much younger kids.

00:26:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So let's talk about a m routines because this is always a source of stress for people, I think with getting back to school.

00:26:21
Speaker 3: You know, I know many of our listeners still have kids in daycare.

00:26:24
Speaker 1: Over the summer, they have had camps, so it's not like you're completely out of the routine of getting people out the door in the morning. But there may be a little bit more rigor to it on school mornings. So what have you been experimenting with this year, Sarah?

00:26:39
Speaker 2: I today went really badly, So I'm like, I can't tell anyone anything except that it's okay if this is a work in progress. It actually went so badly that, like I had a whole like talking to to the kids on the way to school. I did not play the Barbie soundtrack they requested. Instead, we talked about the logistics of the morning and how it could have gone better. But we did talk about but in seat time, which I got that from the mom hour. They actually called it ais with a different word, but we're very clean podcast, so we're not going to use that word.

00:27:07
Speaker 3: Yes we are.

00:27:08
Speaker 2: So we did talk about that, so they know the kind of goal time that I want them in the car ready to go. Today they sort of almost made it, but not without a lot of more help than I feel like they should need maybe, so we're going to keep working on it. I've kind of talked to them about like working backwards because I often get back from running and I don't want to micromanage every second from the wake up to the out the door. Josh is going to I think help in some more specific ways. But yeah, it's a work in progress. The kids have to get up around six forty six forty five in order for it to get smoothly, so that we can have butt in seat time at seven thirty five, which is necessary because, by the way, since it's on the way to work, like, my drop off with them affects my arrival at work time, and I don't like getting there when patients are already in the room, like it's not good. So I have a very vested interest in keeping things running smoothly in the morning. And so it's a work in progress and we will I think it will get better.

00:28:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, you know, it's always a learning process the first few weeks, getting people to understand the importance of it. We have so many button seat times in the course of our morning just because of the number of different schools and start times and up that I just.

00:28:25
Speaker 3: I assume this year will be relatively similar.

00:28:28
Speaker 1: Probably I will set my alarm at six point thirty, make sure Jasper is up, then I go shower. The first run leaves at seven o'clock, so that's either Jasper and Michael or it's Jasper and Sam and Michael. If on the jazz band mornings, they drop Jasper off right around you know, seven to ten, then bring Sam over to the middle school for a seven twenty drop off for his rehearsal, and then Mike either comes home or goes straight to.

00:28:57
Speaker 3: Work whatever the need is.

00:29:00
Speaker 1: He often will try to then make a like eight ten train or something if he's going somewhere. I get Ruth up at seven and she gets ready to take the bus. If Sam's home on that morning, he'll take the bus too. They walk down the hill or if it's rainial, drive them in the van and just down the bottom of the hill from our driveway basically, and then they get on the bus probably like seven thirty five, seven forty I think is the time.

00:29:27
Speaker 3: We'll have to see what that is this year. Then it's back, you know, in the house.

00:29:32
Speaker 1: I can either have the quiet time or this year, I'm going to wake Henry up so he's good to go and has had his mommy time so that I can get started working at eight.

00:29:41
Speaker 3: But they leave around eight thirty five eight forty.

00:29:43
Speaker 1: For Alex can be dropped off after eight forty eight forty five, I think for the elementary school and Henry's, you know, somewhere around eight fifty to nine nine o'clock for the preschool.

00:29:53
Speaker 2: So yeah, yours is so there are just a lot of moving parts. I feel like I'd have to write it all and it sounds like you got it.

00:30:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, the problem is if it was like I mean, because occasionally both my husband and I have had to do the whole morning on our own for one reason or another, and it's a long time. You get up at six point thirty, you're coming home from the last drop off at like nine fifteen. It's like you put in a whole shift and you haven't done anything out of to get people out the door. It's really kind of exhausting, and you can do it because what we then do, actually we shift it. If one person is home alone Ruth does not take the bus then because we leave her with the little kids to drive the other two, or Sam is on the bus that morning, then it's okay because we just drives and leave Sam and Ruth, but the little kids then they can take the bus. But if not, you know, she stays home until the other person back and then we need to get her to school. So it's just a lot. It's more driving, but in order not to be neglectful of small children. Obviously that doesn't work. But yeah, you can do it as one adult, but it's hard.

00:31:06
Speaker 2: Wow. Yes, no, I'm intimidy. I mean if you ever had to completely outsource that, like if both of you were away, you'd have to draw like out like a well we have.

00:31:14
Speaker 1: There have been mornings where we've both been gone and yes, that's what we do that. Everyone knows the routine, like, there have been times when I've done it solo, Michael's done it solo, or Nanny's done at solo. But it kind of stakes, which is why we all we try to not make that happen too often.

00:31:30
Speaker 2: Got it? Team effort makes sense. Screens, Yes, our favorite topic. Just kidding, not really, we're visiting this again. So what's your timeline for this? I don't have a huge one. I mean, I kind of don't want the kids. They don't have a lot of time for screens during the week once all the sports and activities start, so that's good, But I don't know, I'm kind of I actually haven't made up my mind entirely because part of me just feels like it would be simple, or to just be like, other than Annabel having some social screen time because Camera doesn't seem to care about that yet, to just be like no screens until Friday, like because I don't know, like the constant at like can I have it? Can I not have it? Is your homework done well? That gets really nebulous when your homework is like on a week cycle or you have big projects, Like part of me just wants to draw some kind of hardline. I know I want them off of all screens by seven thirty, and I know I want them to have completed some whatever homework they had planned for, plus potentially like practice piano and like do some other things before they get on them. But I have it entirely decided how I want things to look other than I do want Annabel to be able to participate socially with friends and stuff like that. So I'm fine to concede that. Now her school has a hard line no cell phone policy, and apparently it is very much enforced. I actually didn't know that, and I'm really excited about it, and it also makes me feel better about the fact she was self conscious about having a Nokia flip phone, which is what we gave her. But it doesn't really matter because honestly, everybody's phones are like basically in their bag and they're only to be used like in an emergency or something, and if they're seen out at any other time, they just get taken away. So yeah, I'm really glad about that part because I think in prior years they allowed them at certain break periods, but then the head of the school decided that wasn't in their best interests. So pretty screen free at school other than obviously they're chromebook and doing work and stuff.

00:33:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been sort of. The high school is definitely not. I mean I think most teachers are like not in class, but you can have it during like your free period or your lunch or whatever, because I'll get texts in the middle of the day. The middle school, I think it is in your backpack except for bus and whatever other time like that, or if there's an emergency you have to text your mom about something. But yeah, so we are probably going to have our same rule as last year, which is that everyone gives me their devices or goes and puts them, docks them, and mikel in my room at nine and lights out as at ten. This is the older four kids, by the way, that they have a screen free hour then from nine to ten, which I know Josper is still doing homework at that point. I think the others are mostly going to be reading or doing little hobby stuff in their rooms. So yeah, that's the plan. And then obviously you can't. I mean in the morning. We've gone back and forth of this, like most of the time they don't have time for it because they're trying to get out the door. Alex is sometimes motivated, like he can have it for a while if he gets everything done. But the problem is then sometimes he wants to wake up early, guess. So we've had alarms go off at early moments in the that he's set because he wants to get.

00:34:45
Speaker 2: Up to you.

00:34:45
Speaker 3: So we have to kind of thread that needle a little bit.

00:34:52
Speaker 1: Generally, my thought is you have to do your homework, you're doing your activities, you've got school. There's just not that much time, and so I don't feel like police it. Other than that, we'll figure out.

00:35:02
Speaker 3: With Alex.

00:35:03
Speaker 1: We took away the iPad in the spring because it just wasn't working.

00:35:07
Speaker 3: He wasn't able to handle it.

00:35:08
Speaker 1: But we got it back in the summer, just because there's a lot more time and like we're traveling and all that. I think if he does things cooperatively and there's no trouble, then maybe he can have it back in the fall.

00:35:21
Speaker 3: But we'll see, because I don't know.

00:35:22
Speaker 1: I was listening to him watching some YouTube shorts or whatever on the couch and something came out of there that was just like nasty, and I was like, whoa, I you know, if you don't watch this again, we're watching other things. You watch shows, But it's like impossible to police that entirely, and so I'm yeah, I don't know.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: Have to figure out how to manage that one.

00:35:42
Speaker 2: It's tough. And I'll say one of our challenges is that the kid who probably has the most time for screens is Genevieve. But like, it doesn't quite sit right with me to have like a five year old spending like four hours a day while her siblings go to activities on screen. So that's why I just feel like I need to figure something out.

00:35:57
Speaker 1: But well, it she'll probably be more reading into during the year, though at some point that might develop a little bit more.

00:36:03
Speaker 3: Let's hope.

00:36:06
Speaker 1: I'm sure yeah, it'll happen. It'll happen in time. And then what times your kids go to bed? I just said mine are in their rooms at nine, bedtime at ten, which if anyone wants to add it up, it works with the morning start.

00:36:17
Speaker 2: If your kids start a lot later than my mind have to be really honestly, if they could be up at six thirty, it would be better.

00:36:24
Speaker 3: Right now.

00:36:24
Speaker 2: Genevieve, I kind of start putting her to bed at like eight, and then usually she goes to bed by eight thirty. The big kids, I actually don't really police that. I just sort of like lie with them for a little bit, talk to them, and then a lot of times just like leave them to read. So I don't actually know exactly when they turn their lives off. They don't have devices at that point, so it's whenever they're tired, probably nine, nine thirty something like that. I will say again, it's we just started the school year, but it's been a struggle getting them out of bed, so I may have to kind of work with them to work backwards, to be like, what's the right time so that when it's morning, it's not like I have to like blow a trumpetty times my scream that we have to leave to get everyone awake. And that's all about going to bed, because if you've gotten enough sleep, you're probably going to be easier to rouse. Although I guess as they get older that clock gets it gets more challenged.

00:37:14
Speaker 3: It's a teenager think it's.

00:37:15
Speaker 1: Hard to get people up in the morning, regardless of how much sleep they've had. I mean, I can't see that they are nights that they've been to bed at like a reasonable time, and they're still sleeping until ten if you let them.

00:37:23
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:37:24
Speaker 2: So interesting, Yeah, I believe it. I fully believe that biology.

00:37:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then finally our own back to school energy. How are you celebrating the start of the school of year, Sarah.

00:37:35
Speaker 2: I just feel like kind of like excited to do all the things, excited to get the sports schedule, like everything that's I know, going to feel like a burden later on, is like yay doing this, doing that, Oh, soccer meet and greet. Like I already scheduled our first book club, and I invited my whole running club. Well it's not a huge running club, it's small over for dinner. Because I was like, I feel like we need to do something, so I definitely have some of that. I also already kind of feel tired and overwhel so I don't know, like maybe this is a very fleeting, fleeting kind of a feeling. And I'm also marathon training in really hot weather and that's making me kind of tired. So I don't know. We'll see how I can channel my energy properly.

00:38:15
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:38:16
Speaker 1: Well, here's something i'd throw out as an idea for people who are hoping to capture some of that back to school energy is like, go to the library, not necessarily with your kids. I mean, you can go with your kids if you want and just get a bunch of random books on random topics and enjoy flipping through them.

00:38:30
Speaker 3: You know, it's like the Ultimate course catalog.

00:38:32
Speaker 1: Even if your local branch is not that huge, like the probably the nonfiction section of randomness is large, because that's certainly the case with our tiny, little local library. I have been reading all sorts of random stuff because it's free, right. So It's like I read a book on Virginia Wolf's Garden. It was like a coffee table book of like the current. You know, they preserved the house and gardens as a historic site, but then they also historically about what was there because her her very close friend Vita Sackville West, was a very famous gardener as well, so there was a lot of influence there.

00:39:09
Speaker 3: And Leonard Wolfe, her husband, was also a major gardener, so that was interesting. I've been reading.

00:39:19
Speaker 1: I read a book about like the science of metabolism. I read Oh gosh, I'm reading a book about trees, and the sounds like the acoustics of this of trees, you know, just totally totally random. That looks interesting in the library. So if you were the sort of person who was enjoying looking at all the options in a course catalog like at your university, I would throw that out there as an idea.

00:39:45
Speaker 2: I feel like this is your pattern, Like when your kids get past three, all of a sudden, you're like reading like ten times more than you were before. That's awesome.

00:39:53
Speaker 3: I love it. Oh well, I can see it from time logs too.

00:39:56
Speaker 1: You know, women with children over the age of two like spend statistic significantly more time on things like reading than when they're under two.

00:40:04
Speaker 3: So yes, own it all right.

00:40:06
Speaker 1: So our question for the week this was sent into Sarah, but we can both answer it because this person give a shout out by the way to best laid Plans, which everyone should be listening to if you listen to this podcast. She says, you've mentioned you try to spend one on one time with each of your kids, like mommy days. Sometimes your husband also does activities one on one with the kids as well. How do you recommend organizing one on one time when you have multiple kids with each parent, making sure they have similar amounts of time so that it is fair, and working this into an already busy schedule. I can tell this person like really listens to you, Sarah, I mean, and that they're really into like the planning aspect of it.

00:40:43
Speaker 3: I'm like, WHOA, that sounds like a lot of planning.

00:40:47
Speaker 2: To make this a lot of planning, I mean my method of doing it, And I'm not even like, I mean, there are so many ways you could do this, and you could do it on some kind of like frequency or cadence. I think I tried that once. It was like too much, but I just tryver yearly and I generally do it in the summer because they're more likely to be free. There's some weeks without camp and stuff like that, and I literally will just block off like days in my planner. Once I did it like all in one week, that was like a mistake. I was like, I cannot do three days in a row of like all kid led activities. This past year I did like three tuesdays in a row, which also wasn't the best because like every time I do that, I lose my work day for podcasting and stuff, and I get squeezed and then I'm like stressed. So I think I'll keep experimenting with cadences, maybe with like one day a month for each kid that might be the winner. But I literally do have to block off that time months in advance because stuff will fill it. I'll put a hair appointment or what you know, I'll put a podcast interview. Like stuff is gonna fill it, So I block it out. And then as we get closer to the dates, I let the kids kind of just like decide what they want to do, and we keep it really simple, like I know Laura's de like theme parks and stuff, but generally we're like we'll go to them all. I watch a movie, get ice cream, like, go to Target, and they enjoy just having that attention bestowed upon themselves. You reference my husband, and yes, he's done a couple of like one on one type trips with Cameron, in particular going snowboarding, and I will say, like, maybe that's not fair, although I think I took both girls on different occasions to North Carolina on a one to one trips and maybe it is fair. But it's more about like what each kid needs or what makes sense at a given moment, and I worry more about like, is each kid getting the time that they need versus being tit for tat totally fair. It's impossible to be totally fair when it comes to things like even presence or attention. You know, you just can't add up like that in your life. So I don't stress about that too much. So yeah, that's kind of how I've done it, and I do feel like they enjoy it, they look forward to it, and it does take a lot of planning or just like the protection of that time.

00:42:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the protection of the time is the hardest part of it. I started out.

00:42:47
Speaker 1: Saying like, oh, maybe I'll do mommy days with all five in the course of the summer, and then realize like we could split this, and especially like by using weekends, so my husband wound up doing Daddy days with the two younger kids. One was more truly planned, like they chose a date and then my husband looked into stuff that he thought they would enjoy. They wound up doing this mountain biking and fishing extravaganza up in the Poconos. And then for Henry what wound up happening is he was like the only one who really wanted to go to this fair, like the York State Fair or whatever it is.

00:43:23
Speaker 3: So he and Michael went for the day and they they had a plast.

00:43:27
Speaker 1: I mean, just Henry rode like every single kiddie ride and they looked at animals and all that. So that was fun for Henry at least, I hopefully my husband was okay with it. I wound up taking the older three, and this is really more dictated by their interests, and sometimes kids ask for trips over Christmas for interest and since, and that winds up being something that can only be executed over the summer. Jasper's always up for a trip to New York. The bar has kind of been raised because we've been doing like overnight trips, but this summer I wound up taking Sam to Bar Harbor for a couple of days. That was his Christmas present, but we wound up saying that kind of your your mommy day. Jasper went to New York City overnight with me and we did you know, stuff there. Then Ruth wanted to get her ears pierced, and so we turned that into a bit of a mommy day. We went out for lunch, we got our ears praised, we did some shopping, so that was it was kind of not as big a production as some of the others, but it still had to be scheduled with the appointment with the ears and all that.

00:44:23
Speaker 3: So you know, that's how we do it.

00:44:25
Speaker 1: But I think on a sort of more day to day kind of basis, I will often audit myself kind of at the end of the day and say, did I spend some time with each of the kids? And usually the answer is yes, either because I've driven them somewhere, or we had a chat about something before bed, or I sat with them doing something, you know, but trying to figure this out, like am I spending time? And if I feel like one particular kid did not get some time, I might make a point of being in their room a little bit longer at night, like I might go in a little bit earlier so I have time to chat with them or go to them first, so I a little bit longer of a time.

00:45:01
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's what we do.

00:45:03
Speaker 2: Awesome love of the week, All right.

00:45:08
Speaker 3: Do you have one?

00:45:09
Speaker 2: Sure? So we talked about school supplies and getting them for adults. So I decided and Annabel have been really pushing for a jet pens order, so we did a celebratory, totally unnecessary jet Pens order. And in particular my I think a great school supply for someone just exploring Japanese stationary are Cocuyo campus notebooks. They are pretty inexpensive, they're thin, you could use them for like taking notes or studying, and Annabel had been wanting a set of them for like forever, and they came and they're in these cute pastel colors, so we're sharing them. They come in like sets of five, so nice. Just my love of the week.

00:45:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, since we're still recording this, and what's summer for me? We are at the beach and I love being at the beach. It's really just kind of my happy place. I love to see the ocean, in particular, the light on the waves yesterday at about five pm. We were out on the beach then and as the sun's going down, so it's not so hot, and it kind of has this slanted light, particularly in late summer, it's just so beautiful and you know, so, I guess that's my love of the week is light on water and sand in August.

00:46:19
Speaker 3: Makes me happy that it's still summer here.

00:46:22
Speaker 1: But yeah, we're going back to school soon, so this has been our best of Both Worlds annual back to school extravaganza. I'm sure we'll update on how things are going soon enough, but in the meantime, we'll be back next week with more on making work in life fit together.

00:46:39
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

00:46:47
Speaker 4: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.

00:47:00
Speaker 1: A