Working outside of the home:

I am a full time working mom. After almost 5 years at the same daytime job, I resigned. I am now working for a wonderful company. They have AWESOME benefits, and a great career path. The challenging thing is the schedule. Right now, they only have night shifts available. So I work from 3:30pm-12 midnight. It's great & not so great for various reasons. My husband is taking the brunt now with the kids. We are exhausted. But we are committed. Some things are worth the sacrifice. Soon enough, I will hopefully get a dayshift. But for now, we are just dealing with it.

I work outside the home part time, and do some of my work from home part time (total about 30 hours per week) I am very BLESSED to have this arrangement, but it is still very tough. DH does help out in some areas, like laundry, but other areas, like dishes, and general cleaning are always pileing up

i am a single mom to two and work outside of the home 40 hours a week. my son goes to pre-k at one school and my daughter daycare at another so i have two drop off points and while i am about 10-15 minutes away from my office it takes 45min-1hr for drop off and pick up routines. what helps me the most is to have meals made the night before or cooking in the crock pot while i am at work. my kids are typically hungry right when we get home and if they are crabby while i am trying to fix meals i get crabby. we typically have left overs every other night and go out to eat once a week. having meals ready to be warmed up or cooked when we get home, gives us more time in the eveing together. i don't buy anything that has to be ironed and i do laundry in the mornings before work, a lot of the time. i have more energy to get stuff done in the morning rather than at night after working all day and spending time with the kids, i like to have time to my self then. i keep clorox clean-ups in the bathroom to quickly clean the sink and toilet during the week and give the bathroom one good cleaning each weekend. my kids have daycare/school clothes that they wear during the week (doesn't matter what happens to them, they get pitched at the end of the season). not a lot of prepartation for clothes in the morning. right now my family room is a mess, i am not stressed about it, as long as the bathroom and kitchen are relatively picked up, the family room can wait till the weekend.

I work full time, dh just started his own business and is working from home, so he is the primary caregiver for our ds (4yrs old) now.It is difficult, we are still struggling to make it all work, and now we are adopting a 2nd child; needed more to juggle!:) Dh and Ds do the laundry and grocery shopping during the week, we all share the cleaning. I try to do as many errands during my lunch hour so that on weekends ds and I can just play and spend time together. And I treat my 45 minute commute (each way) as my alone/down time, listening to music and catching up on phone calls. The biggest part of our success right now is caffeine!! Great thread, looking to see how other families make this work.

The biggest part of our success right now is caffeine!! Sadly, this is also the secret of our "success" right now. I'm in academia. I teach and have office hours in the mornings while ds is in preschool, I'm home with him in the afternoons, and and I do work again when he goes to bed. I have either the best of both worlds (SAH and work) or the worst (ft job to do in pt hours) but I wouldn't trade my time with ds for anything. (except, sometimes, maybe a little more sleep). When dd comes home, I'll be doing most of my work from home, and dh has great paternity leave (yay!) so that transition shouldn't be so bad.

I work full time and go to school time in addition to being a wife and mom. My girls are teens now though so it is easier. When they were younger I was their girl scout leader instead of going to school. Since going back to school I gave up scouting (the girls were tired of it, and dh despised it). Dh has taken on more of the house responsibility (this is his way of compromising since I gave up scouting, he is ok with me spending so much time going to school). The kids are supposed to know what they are wearing for school before bed and take their showers, that way they can sleep in a little while in the am. I get up and do 30 minutes of aerobics to get me motivated in the am then get everyone else up. I only have to take the kids to the bus stop then I head off to work. My classes are only one night a week so that doesn't interfere too much with the kids, and they have relativly lite schedules. One is in drama working on a play, neither are into sports. After school the kids cook their own diners and dh does his when he gets home. I rarely eat diner. The kids are supposed to have the kitchen and living room done when I get home and we all either watch a tv program or sit in the living room reading together (This is when I do my reading homework). I have been very lucky that I can usually find some downtime at work to do my homework. If not it gets done on the weekend. Most of the time the house is a mess but I try to do a thorough job at least once a month. I do the kitchen and living room on the weekends to give the girls a break. DH does all the laundry and shopping and cooks dinner on Saturday and Sunday for the whole family. I cook a big Sunday morning breakfast and we all pick a movie to watch while we eat. I try to make car time our special talk time. That is when the kids and I have a lot of heart to hart talks. This summer we are going to plan a family home improvement project every weekend or two for family time. Last weekend we planted 250 pine trees. Of course we haven't yet gotten our foster/adopt children yet so I fully expect the schedule to have a lot of adjusting, but I hope with adopting older children we can integrate them in a little easier.

McKenna, you are truly an inspiration to me. I will have to try the precooked meals, because you are so right trying to cook in the evening when they are so worked up is not easy. I am a single mom to a beautiful almost 4 year old son, he attends preschool from 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m., I am very lucky that I have my mom who lives really close pick him up daily until I get home some where inbetween 5 and 5:30 daily. I would love to be able to get him from school and go home from there but work load just does not permit it on most days. Once home it is off to cooking, eating supper, bath time, quite time, bed for son and then work around the house. I do the same with the Lysol wipes in the bathroom, I just love them. Unfortunately, most of my Saturday's are spent running errands, shopping, washing, cleaning etc. I have relaxed a lot about the whole everything in its place before I go to bed and now just take it as it comes. If it gets picked up great, what helps alot is that we have a play room so the majority of the toys are in there for the most part. I have gotten some greats ideas from this thread and am looking forward to some more, keep them coming.

"McKenna, you are truly an inspiration to me." oh goodness, don't come to my house right now. i have about 10 piles of laundry that need to be put away :p i am telling you though, the meal thing is a life saver. my new years resolution was to plan meals for a whole month and shop for everything that would not go bad at once and then make quick trips for fresh fruits and veggies. this really helps. this week we had chicken and rice (made in the crock pot) two nights, tacos two nights and we are going out on friday. very easy meals and my kids will eat canned veggies with anything, so that helps also.

I'm usually a full-time working mom, but am home right now (until Monday!) with our newborn; well, she's now 4 mos old. I'll start back 2 days a week (M and F) next week for 2 mos., then 3 days a week for 2 mos. and then 4 days a week for a month. My dh and I both work full-time (well, until our pixie was born). He'll take one day a week and my oldest dd'll take one day a week when I go back to work and then my days off will be her 2nd summer job until mid-Aug. By then, we'll have in-home care 9-5:30 for 9 mos., then full-time toddler school at my ds's school starting next summer. I HAVE LEARNED that 3 is a significantly bigger number of children than 2! Still, this was my dream and it's so amazing to feel like our family and my life is complete. I've never felt this way. BUT, I know my time will change when I go back to work. We have family dinner nites one 2 X per week, but I still cook everything fresh ALTHOUGH the freezer is my friend. Because I am an older mom, I already had lots of alone time, so I'm okay with my work-out time being my ONLY alone time now. Otherwise, before work and after work is for my family. Also, my dh is usually the best person about being on-board and he gives our children and our home needs lots of time. I DO have to ask him usually to do something, but he does step up when I ask. I had to learn this, eek. Once I'm back to work full-time I'll have to answer this question again! LOL. susan

OMG-We have the same life!!!! I work full-time, dh has a small home business and takes care of our 4 yo son and 7 mos old baby boy. Isn't that funny. Dh being a WAHD does help somewhat ( not as much as if I was home---but that is another thread). Our 4 year old is in school 3 full days and 2 half days. We have a fulltime live-in maid, but even with someone doing the cooking and cleaning I still find it hard. I really take my hat off to those who are doing it all. I must lack some organizational gene or something. Dh juggles work with baby. He gives the 4 yo guitar lessons and takes him to tennis lessons on his half days.He mostly works on DS's long days when baby is sleeping. For me its hard because I leave work at 6 everyday. I am the first person on the executive floor to leave everyday. I get in between 8:30-8:45 in the morning. I am the last person to get in everyday. I feel like the entire office watches me come and go. I get home by 6:45, we eat dinner at 7pm. The kids are in the bathtub by 7:45. We have story time until 8:20 and then lights off. I then usually do work until I go to bed. I have zero time to myself and I still feel like I am slacking at work. Then with the kids, I feel like the mom who is always a little late for school functions, dashing in with store bought cookies ( instead of homemade like everyone else). I got stuck in a meeting at work and was late for the xmas show. DS was on stage when I arrived---looking like sad sack. I felt like a heel. At least his face really brightened up when he saw me come in. I am writing this at work during my lunch---so sorry this turned into a vent---I really don't want to work full-time, but I have to :(