Hellobee

Sick days/snow days/school events: flex our time at work, trade off, and work from home as necessary, plus take half days of vacation or sick time. Makes for long days, but I know soon they’ll be old enough to fully entertain themselves at home while I put in a full day.

I work part time these days – partially from home and partially outside the home – just if I had any more hours, I wouldn’t be able to juggle the “work at nap and night” routine I have going. I am always amazed when I hear of any wahp managing to accomplish anything without childcare.

I handle all the sick days unless it is a Friday, then DH takes off since that is the only day he is home. It is hard but luckily my work understands. I have a laptop so I can do some work at home while she naps.

That level of parental involvement is definitely not conducive to work! I work from home half-time, and our son goes to daycare for those hours. Now that he’s a toddler and is on a more regular schedule there (i.e. set meal and nap times), he actually goes for four 8-hour days each week. At first it was weird for me, but we all enjoy the set schedule, and he loves the stimulation. Sick days are tough, but thankfully both my husband’s and my job are flexible enough to tag team it. We’re very happy with this arrangement. I get an hour or so in the afternoon to so housework after I finish my job work, then I pick up my son at 4 or 4:30, and we get quality time together before dinner time. Plus, we spend every Friday (all day) together.

Right now I have a sitter come two mornings a week. Otherwise, I just do what I can during naps and after bed, or cram in a little work during screen time if I’m desperate. I would like to take on more work, but I always have to remind myself of the trade-off: more money spent on child care and less time with the kids. Also, the baby still hates bottles, sooooo yeah.

I WOH and unfortunately, most of the schedule juggling falls to me when either or both of the boys get sick. DH’s job is not conducive AT ALL to flexible scheduling. Fortunately, my company is pretty understanding about me constantly having to call out and work from home since I still make sure I get all my work done. But it is a stress point in our lives because I feel like I’m the one who always has to drop everything. Let’s just say out of the last 8 weeks, I’ve probably had maybe 3 weeks where I made it through the entire week without having to call out.

That’s why I stay at home! I can barely handle that, no way I can work too! I love that pic of Chloe! She’s sooo beautiful!

Both my DH and I work outside of the home and we have two kids. If one is sick we would take turns working at home and sending the other to daycare, because with one home we could still do work, but it did take a lot longer to get stuff accomplished so whomever worked from home that day was still working after the kids went to bed. But if both kids were sick, we either both had to work from home or I took a vacation day. And sometimes we can call in Mimi and/or Papa to watch one or both kids if both of us need to be at work and for this I am very thankful.

For the polar vortex, both of our work places at the time were very good about telling employees to telecommute so those days we both worked from home, long hours on those days for both of us but we got it done.

My DH just switched jobs so his vacation time is much less than mine (even at his previous job I had more) so there were days I would just say screw it and take a vacation day to be home with the kids. This new job seems to be pretty flexible on the work from home stuff and luckily he started at the end of cold season so we will see how things play out in the upcoming fall/winter.

We are not required to be at our kids parties and truthfully they don’t have many (which I am happy about) and their field trips are generally in house the exception was apple picking. An example of the in house field trip is they have the aquarium come do a presentation with some animals rather than taking the kids into the aquarium. Also they did painted pottery, they had the pottery painting in house and sent it out to be fired.

I typically handle sick days because I just get more time than Hubs does. If our daycare required parental participation/attendance at their parties/events, we’d have to find a new daycare. That is kind of a ridiculous expectation on their part!

@sunshineandsushi: Yeah. From before the holidays till mid-February, I went 9 straight weeks without working a full week! Either D was sick, I was sick, or we were sitting under a foot+ of snow! It was really rough.

Flex time, PTO , or Work at home days!

Also, I don’t go to every function – its just not possible!

We also tag-team the sick or snow days. My husband has more flexibility that I do to work from home, so he will typically work the entire day at home and I’ll work a half-day at home. With just the one child who is 3.5, we can make it work. When she was younger I would watch her in the morning while my husband worked earlier hours and I would shift my hours to work into the evening.

The school events that have been the most troublesome for us this year are parent-teacher conference days – typically 2.5 days off 3 times an academic year – and holidays like spring break. We’ve been lucky that grandparents can step in to help with those. Our preschool offers childcare those days, too, at an additional cost.

We are adding a baby to the family in the fall and already planning how we are going to handle this with two!

Side note, when my daughter was born my husband worked from home full time and I can’t tell you how many people just assumed he was watching my daughter while he worked – it’s nearly impossible to work full time (attend conference calls, quickly respond to urgent emails and such) while also caring for a newborn! Babies are a ton of work. I am impressed you were able to do it at all

It’s nice that DH and I have a near identical work schedule. We both WAH 2-3x a week, and our office buildings are one street over from each other so we even have the exact same 10-15 minute commute into the office. This means that things are very equal around here, and on sick days we just alternate who has to handle the childcare for that day. We both have very understanding, flexible managers.

Noelle got sick a lot the first 6 months in preschool, but then her immunity built up and now she’s hardly ever sick. When she is sick, she’s at an age where she can entertain herself more so we can still get work done at home with her around.

We are putting Jaren into school next month, so I’m bracing myself for a lot of sickness in the coming months… but we have backup childcare with my MIL in case we need it.

@Mrs.Maven: very lucky, indeed! Our field trips were on location. We went to a pumpkin patch, Disney on ice and most recently there was a trip to a farm (though we didn’t go). Each are a bus ride or car ride away, and pricing was in addition to tuition.

There was so much parent involvement that I wonder if ANY of the parents at school work. Every parent in Chloe’s class is a SAHM. I was the odd man out!

We’ve been lucky in that after my maternity leave was over, my DH decided to stay home with DS for 6 months. He worked part-time from home but only about 10 hrs/wk so he did it during naps/night time. Now we are transitioning to DH being back at work full time and me at home working part-time (20 hrs a week) and watching DS who is now 9 months. I know I will need to get some childcare help 2-3 days a week so I can get my work done. Interested to hear what you think the pros/cons are of having someone come to your home versus taking the kiddo to a daycare arrangement outside of the home?

@Ashley: we considered out of home childcare, but daycare was too expensive and we couldn’t find a provider who worked in their home.

I found someone who was willing to come to our house which works our very well for us. I make myself and Chloe lunch & I don’t waste time having to drive her to and from childcare.

I feel like I could have written this post back in the day! (I actually have a “day in the life” post drafted that addresses some similar issues, but with the toddler child.) The whole schedule of pre-school was why we ended up with a daycare that had a pre-school program. I found it much easier to do three full days (with school in the morning and play in the afternoon) then five half days. I’m most creative in the mornings, but found it hard to stop after a couple hours then pick up the next day. And all my admin stuff never, ever got done.

What I’m trying to say is … it’s really hard! I’m now in a naps and nighttime schedule… with a few mornings mixed in where I have a 23-month-old assistant. (Those can be “super fun.”)

It does get better though! As for the functions… I don’t know if it’s a possibility for you, but we have several moms in the classes who will cover for moms who can’t make it. (Because moms need to work sometimes!) And the functions get less intense in Kindergarten it seems.

@Mrs. Paintbrush: sometimes I have an assistant too, and it makes working so much more difficult, especially if I have a tight deadline. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on the phone with my attorney and had a kid screaming in the background!

Our classroom participation is literally hands on. We had projects to do with the kids. I’m also one of the only parents that didn’t have a 2nd or 3rd child, who they had to bring with them. Needless to say, it became a very busy and full room VERY fast. I don’t think I could ask someone to step in for me because their hands are full.

But, I learned my lesson! Working during school hours was less productive than I thought it would be. I’m glad to be back to my normal work schedule starting next week! We (I) learned from this and have a plan in place for next school year!

@Mrs. Jump Rope: Oooohhh… hands on?!?! That’s even harder! I’m sorry. We have schools here that don’t allow younger siblings (which I understand), but I don’t know how those parents do it… You literally need to divide and conquer. But learning lessons and applying them is good progress! (Even if it was a little painful.)

It really frustrates me the expectations for parent time in the classroom. I love coming, but the idea that we should all be available at 10am!? And so often available without any other children. I am a sham and I struggle with it.

Thanks for this post. I work from home and currently do my work at night into the wee hours and it is exhausting. On occasion we pay our son’s Uncle who is a child development counselor to watch him for 3-4 hours after his nap but we are really looking into getting someone here on a regular schedule at least 2-3 days a week because I need more time in “The Zone” since I am a creative director/Artist.

Question: For those with full day in home care, what does your nanny do while your child naps? Any things to consider looking for a nanny if you are a WAH mom?

i don’t think i could do it! mad props to you, momma! and here’s to hoping the summer goes well!!

I’m slowly getting back into the swing of working again from home. I have a sitter that I drop my daughter off at two days a week in the mornings for a few hours. However, the sitter was sick one day last week and then my daughter was sick this week, so I had to squeeze work in during nap time (which never really works well for me).

That’s crazy that you have to go to so many functions! You should pay them less on those days that you’re there

@Mrs. Rabbit: I’m working on a post for my reflections on her first year of preschool, and $$ is definitely on my mind!! The preschool follows the school districts schedule, so that’s how we know about delays or cancellations. BUT the schools have snow makeup days, and we DONT. And if the school had an in service day, we did too… Even though our preschool accepts kids from 4 districts, not necessarily the district they follow. Makes no sense because it’s not like our teachers had an in service day!

All that to say, we paid monthly for a full month of classes. We missed two weeks in December for Xmas break, almost the entire month of January bc of the polar vortex, and school ended today… even though I paid for a full month.

I was working at home for a few years before M was born. It never even crossed my mind that I’d be able to work with him! I went back to work at 12w and he went to daycare every day. I did have a nice routine in the beginning where he’d take his first nap in the morning at home and then I’d bring him to daycare, but he went every day I was working.

I somewhat work out of home and also take care of the kids (and they come with me to work too) and its not always fun or easy. You seem to balance it all better than I could