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weezie825
member
How do you fit it all in??? (sort of a whine)
weezie825
member
How do you all fit everything you have to do into the evening? I generally pick Evie up at 5:15 and get home at 5:30. If DH is picking her up they get home closer to 6.
The issue is that by 6:30 she is ready to start settling down for the night. She usually has her last bottle sometime between 6:45 and 7:15 and then we have quiet cuddles until she falls asleep usually between 7:15 and 8.
DH and I have been living on a diet of fast food and delivery becasue lately I haven't even had time to cook. I keep thinking someday I'll find my groove. I really hope that happens before I need to start wearing my maternity pants from gaining so much weight!
To complicate things further DH is in grad school, so on the nights he isn't home I end up eating fast food or total junk for dinner.
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Re: How do you fit it all in??? (sort of a whine)
Try cooking enough on Sundays to last through Thursday. Set aside Fridays for carryout/fast food.
My H works nights, so it's just me and LO when I get home. I'm not sure what I eat daily, but I eat something. Now that LO is eating table food, I have to find something for him as well.
It's usually just me and my pup in the evenings; sometimes my FI's sister, but she's usually working or doing nursing clinicals in the evening. My FI works two jobs so I hardly see him these days. :-(
It will all fit together piece by piece eventually, it's really hard to juggle it. Whine away.
One bit of advice for you, prep your veggies and fruits for the week on Sunday night. That way, when you get home from a long day of work all you have to do is cook. No prep involved. I store everything in Tupperware until I am ready to use it.
I would agree with those that say pre plan. I travel for work so when I am gone I am gone. I am usually gone 2-3 nights at a time. When I am gone its just DH and DS. I try to make sure my Husband has some food ready to go. DH gets home about 530-545. Its quickly feed DS play for a few minutes then his bed time routine starts at 630 a little earlier on bath nights. He gets his bottle then he is in bed before 7. So having food read to be heated up helps not eat TOO late. When I am home he eats closer to 5 so it is not rushed. But good or bad most times we eat when he is in bed. Having food prepped or ready really helps.
When I am home I cook bigger meals so it is easy the next night. I also usually do a rotissere chicken from the grocery store when I don't feel like cooking. Throw it over a salad and it is fairly healthy especially if you avoid the skin. Then the leftovers are at least another meal for 2. You can do so much with a chicken.
We always chop a bunch of veggies and put them in a tupperware. Each veggie in its own. It helps them stay good. We eat salad every night and just put it together 1 salad at a time. Hope that makes sense. Some nights we will just throw chicken or fish on the grill and a quick rice packet and wish it well.
When you are overwhelmed just do what you need to do to get by. Don't be so hard on yourself to have everything perfect. Some days, weeks are better then others. I am sure your LOs would rather a few minutes of you over a clean house or gourmet meal(:
This is my biggest struggle with working (well, after finding a DCP and leaving DS the first week, lol!)
It is hard to fit it all in. I pick up DS and get home around 5:40. Usually, DH is home already and has made dinner. On those nights, we eat while DS plays and then we feed him, bathe him if it is a bath night, jammies, read books and sing songs and then nurse/bed. Otherwise, we eat after he goes down at 7/7:15 - which isn't too late, but we are crabbier, lol. I don't start dishes or laundry or whatever until after he is sleeping. I try to take until 8:30 to clean up the kitchen or toys or a bathroom, etc...just to make my life a little easier on the weekends. I pack bottles and bags for daycare right before I got to bed (since I pump one more time before bed.)
What works for us is that DH cooks and often cooks bigger meals with leftovers on the weekends that we eat during the week. We sometimes double up meals for the freezer too...uh, although we have to remember to take them OUT of the freezer.
Happy Birthday, little man. We love you so much!
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I think this is a problem for most working moms and families.
DH and DD get home ~6:00-6:15; I get home around 6:30-6:45. Frankly, DD is beat most days - and havinga meal w/ her is not particularly pleasant, b/c she's tired adn cranky. We try to feed her as soon as possible for dinner - and she gets lots of chicken nuggets, pretzels, bananans for dinner - anything she'll eat. We try to eat family meals on the weekends and once or twice during the week. Some nights it works, some nights it doesn't. Regardless of what's going on w/ our dinner though - DD goes to bed @ 7:30. Sometimes we eat after she's in bed. There are a lot of cereal and PB&J dinners at our house. I'm not Martha Stewart or Superwoman.
I know people say crockpot, cook on the weekends, etc. but I want to relax on the weekend and hang out w/ DD and DH.
E and I get home anywhere between 5:20 and 6:00pm, DH works from home so he's already there. We usually play for an hour, if its nice we go outside but lately E has only wanted to watch movies, sigh.
DH makes dinner most nights, so I get to play while he cooks. I like to cook but E doesn't like me to cook, so its not worth the fight. Dinner is around 7:00pm. We eat as a family. If one of us is not home, dinner is usually cheese and crackers in front of the TV with E. We really need both of us to make it work. And we really don't try and get anything else done around the house or work-wise during that time - its play with E and dinner only.
After dinner, its bath on bath night or its pj time and a little tv/play time and then stories and bed at 8:00pm.
If I do cook, its a crock pot meal I put together the night before, or I have been known to throw some stuff in the crock pot in the morning before everyone else is up.
We eat a lot of the same, easy meals over and over again. Like PP, we also will cook enough to have leftovers for the next day or two.
I usually get home by 5:15 and DH, if he's not working that night, will get home around 5:45. I am sometimes ambitious enough to start dinner before he gets home, but it also depends on Sydney's mood.
Some meals we have a lot are:
premade salmon that we buy at BJ's and just throw in the oven to bake, with veggies you can make in the microwave (steamfresh brand or something similar)
pasta with meatballs and spinach or broccoli (we buy the meatballs at BJ's and they are pre-cooked but frozen so we just have to heat them up)
tacos - all you have to cook is the ground meat and we always throw a bag of frozen veggies (Hanover brand's "latino blend" is black beans, corn and peppers) in with the ground meat, then pile it on a soft or hard taco shell with cheese, salsa, sour cream
baked chicken breasts in italian dressing or baked chicken breasts topped with breadcrumbs, pasta sauce and mozzarella cheese and a steamfresh-type vegetable
And sometimes its just a free-for-all and we will eat grilled cheese, eggs, fruit snacks or whatever because neither of us feels like cooking or we haven't been to the grocery store
We just make Sydney the priority and make sure she has whatever she needs - bath, bottle, food and a decent bedtime - then we worry about ourselves and any household chores.
I don't think my answer is different than anyone else...somehow we just do it. And my husband does it by himself twice a week at night while I work in private practice. I do think it will get easier and know that you are in the same boat as us all!
We do meal plan every week so dinner is a no brainer. Without planning, we would rely much more on convenience foods. I also try to cook a bigger meal on Sunday and Wednesday nights for leftovers for the next nights that I work. I also make all of A.'s food for the week or even weeks on Saturdays or Sundays as I really don't have the time during the week. The only other night we really cook is Tuesday and Friday/Saturday (we will order out/go out one or the other each week). And on those nights in, it is always something very easy....salsa chicken in the crockpot, pasta, chicken terriyaki over rice, beef tacos, a meat and veggie on the grill, etc.
We also do not do any laundry or cleaning or preparing for the next day while A. is up as our time is so limited with her as it is. She goes down around 8pm so in that next hour, we let the DVR record for us and we will run around making lunches, cleaning up from dinner, doing any house cleaning, cleaning and making bottles, etc.