When do you eat dinner?

Alligator

DH and I both get home around 4:30ish. DS is cranky and ready for bath/bed around 6:15. I hate cooking and eating in between then because I don't spend much time with him and I have to stuff my face in order to eat. However, I also hate eating after he goes to bed around 7:30ish because I feel tired and don't want to cook/clean. (DH helps, but still).

I guess this depends on how old your children are. Mine is young enough that I don't have to eat a sit down dinner yet. 

Just curious, when do you eat dinner? Before baby's bedtime or after? Thanks!

flyer23

When she was that age, usually after she went to bed.

Now, I usually pick her up, we come home and nurse (so she's not starving), and then one of us plays with her while the other (usually DH) cooks dinner. We eat dinner as a family around 7pm, then do bathtime and her bedtime routine.

It is very, very important to me that we eat dinner as a family. I think it's so important for DH and me to model good eating habits and table manners for her. We're lucky that she goes to bed later (around 8pm), so we can eat dinner at a reasonable time, but if she needed to go to bed earlier, we would adjust our schedule accordingly, even if that meant DH and I had to eat dinner super-early.

AlisaS

We get home right around 6:00 and during the week, we have dinner around 6:30, It is a little early but we all eat at the same time. Then baths and play-time. The boys got to sleep around 8:30-9.

azuremama

We get home around 4:30-5 and we eat between 6 and 6:30.  He goes to bed at 7:30.  I nurse him when we get home so he can hold off a little while.  It's way easier now that he eats solid food because we can feed him while we eat. 

We used to put him in a bouncy seat or bumbo next to the table while we ate.  A lot of times, though, one of us would eat while the other held him because he was freaking out.

molldoll71

Before Billy was old enough to eat with us we ate dinner after he went to bed - around 8:30.  Now that he eats with us we eat dinner around 7.

mie

We get home around 4:30ish and eat at 6. ?It doesn?t leave a lot of time to play unless I cooked the night before.

Taylor44

We all eat together between 6:00 and 6:30.  My son has always gone to bed around 8:00 pm.

jlw2505

My kids are 11 months and 2 years 8 months and we eat dinner at around 5 or 5:30.  DH gets home around 4:45 and the girls and I get home around 5.  We do as much prep and cooking the night before after the girls are in bed so all we need to do is heat up the meal or toss is in the oven to cook.  We have always eaten as a family, even when the girls were too little to eat, they sat in the swing and watched us or napped but I feel like the family meal is so important and never to early to start.  My younger DD goes to bed between 6:30 adn 7 and my older between 7 and 7:30 so I totally understand where you are coming from.  While we may not get a ton of play time, we get a lot of together time.  My older DD loves to help in the kitchen so we let her and its great.