My #1 tip for making hard parenting days easier

My #1 tip for making hard parenting days easier

• 9.15.2021

I’ve been balancing gratitude and just exhaustion lately. Our kids are so wonderful but take so much out of me these days. Wanted to share something that has been hugely helpful for me in the past year having Lucy, and since Jason started working (first part of this year). I work from home, he works late, blah blah blah… I don’t feel like I have a lot of time to myself and most of my time is while I’m supposed to be watching the kids, or on the weekends when we’re supposed to be enjoying family time. I’ve been doing this one tip I got from a friend a long time ago and I've realized what a game changer it is!

Me with the kids on my birthday

The #1 tip for making days of watching kids easier

This one of my friends has several little ones and her husband travels a lot for work. One of her tips for handling those times when he was gone was, get up before your kids. Yes. An alarm. Early. When you’re low on sleep this is the last thing you want to do, and most kids get up pretty early themselves, but if you can manage it, it makes such a difference. I get up at 6:30 every day have time to myself to just get dressed, feed the cat, eat a little breakfast, check my email… alone. All by myself. It is sometimes the only time in the day (except right before bed when I should be getting off my phone and going to sleep!) that I have to do that. I get Lucy up at 7:00 so it’s not a lot of time, but it sets up my whole day not feeling frazzled and spread too thin.

Now, Jason does not do this. He waits until the last minute when Otto comes to get him or when he has to get up for work, and he never has that quiet time to himself to drink his coffee before he starts a day of parenting and working! It’s really hard for him. Sometimes you feel like that extra 30 minutes of sleep is more important… But as long as you’re not majorly/chronically sleep deprived, for me anyway, 30 minutes of alone time really feels like something. 30 minutes less sleep in the morning? It sucks, but sometimes that sleep isn’t that great anyway (when I can hear kids stirring or the cat meowing or whatever). I do want more sleep, but I know I just need to go to bed earlier!

So anyway. If you are struggling with feeling like you don’t have any time to yourself… It’s worth trying!

Art update from this post