In her blog Reverendmother talks about her daily and weekly routine and wonders what other working mothers' routines look like. Rather than write a lengthy comment on her blog, I figured I'd just write it here and let her know it's here.

Overall I think things work pretty well in our household. We have stress and sometime lack the time to do things that we want to do, but overall, I have no major complaints.

Our weekday afternoon/evening routine is changing as class schedules have changed recently so I'm including what the new evenings will likely look like.

Weekdays all start the same (unless I have the day off from work).

My alarm goes off around 5:50 am, and I roll out of bed sometime between then and 6:15. I head to the bathroom to start the getting ready process. Then get dressed (clothes picked out the night before or I'd waste 10+ minutes staring stupidly at the closet). Lately, I head straight to LB's room and wake him (as close to 6:15 as I can). Either I leave him be after that for a few minutes or carry him to our room and dump him in our bed to snuggle for a bit with Daddy. I head to my office and do a quick e-mail check. After that it's time for LB to get dressed, which sometimes is a minor fight, but not usually.

On good days it's now 6:30 and we head downstairs for breakfast for him. He usually gets oatmeal or a frozen waffle. If we have them left over from the weekend, he gets pancakes. If we're running late, he gets to eat either pancakes or a frozen waffle in the car. Sometimes, he gets a waffle in the car even after he's had a bowl of oatmeal. While he eats breakfast, I get my water bottle into my bag, grab my camera (constant companion), cell phone, keys, sunglasses, and his comb and sunscreen.

Somewhere in there Daddy has gotten himself out of bed and dressed and downstairs. He comes into the kitchen and hugs and kisses are exchanged, and off to work he goes.

After breakfast we head out. Ideally this is at 6:45, but usually it's closer to 6:50-6:55. We hit the road and head towards LB's pre-school. We arrive somewhere between 7:00 and 7:10 usually. I walk him in, sign him in, comb his hair (which I noticed is at the stage of growing out that it sticks straight into the air) and apply his sunscreen (yes, it's winter but this is southern California and he spends at least a few hours outside at school almost every day).

With him delivered to pre-school, I head off to work/school. I usually arrive between 7:15 and 7:25 (work is only about 5 minutes from pre-school). I take my stuff up to my room and drop it off, grab anything that desperately needs to be xeroxed, grab my bag of cereal for breakfast and then head towards the xerox machine (if needed) and to the office to check in and check my mailbox. There's usually a stop in there to say good morning to a few colleagues as well.

8:00 school starts, I teach, quiz, explain, check, grade, prepare, etc...(I could go into my entire day at school, but that's another whole post). Let's just say school runs 8-3. After 3:00 I usually stay around for 30-60 min. preparing materials, doing a bit of grading and generally winding down from the day.

I try to get to pre-school by 4:00. Some day's I'm early, some I'm late.

After school activities change by day. Mon. & Wed. we have swim class 5:15-5:45 so we head home, have a bit of time for play/relaxing then head out to class. Sometimes I take him, sometimes Phil takes him. On Wed. I always take him as Phil has class that evening as well. After swim class we come home, have dinner, and then it's time to get ready for bed. On Tues. & Thurs. we have no activities, sometimes we come straight home, and sometimes we stop at the park on the way home for some play time. If we come straight home, usually Daddy will play outside with LB, either going for a walk or riding his tricycle, or driving his little plastic car (Flintstone's type car, no electric powere there!!), then it's time for dinner and then getting ready for bed. On Friday we have gym class 5:15-6:15. Same pre class stuff as swim class and then home, dinner, then bed. Sometimes I have meetings or other things that keep me at school and then Phil will pick LB up from pre-school, but it's so much closer for me that I usually do it.

Dinner favorites: dumplings (Japanese gyoza), fish, mac and cheese, spaghetti, spaghetti-O's, soup, ravioli. Often times accompanied with some sort of vegetable-he likes many veggies. We all eat different things for dinner as I'm dieting and have to eat my "special diet food," as LB calls it. Once I'm off of the diet, then there is a general plan afoot to have us all eat the same thing for dinner as a family.

Now for the bedtime routine, it generally takes around 30 minutes or so to complete, I think and isn't set in stone, and if he shows poor behavior he loses part of it.
Take vitamin, watch some train videos (his current obsession) on the computer while eating vitamin, put on PJ's, brush teeth, use potty, read books (number varies depending on what else we do and how late it already is), snuggles. Various parts of this routine can be done by different ones of us, depending on his mood, our mood, general energy level, or other stuff. And if there's a bath (not every night) it usually goes after vitamin. He's usually in bed between 7:30 & 8:00.

After LB's in bed, if I have grading or planning work that needs to be done, I work on it, if not, I can relax. Usually I check e-mail/blogs again, and generally play on the internet IF I can afford the time. Otherwise it's work work work.

Bedtime for me SHOULD be 10 pm, but I don't ever sem to make that lately, and it varies widely, but usually is sometime around 11 pm.

Next day, same thing.

Weekends are different.

LB gets up, logs himself into my computer and then watches train videos and/or plays one of his educational games. Eventually something doesn't do what he wants, or he gets tired of it and he comes into our bedroom to get help from one of us. On Saturdays I get up with him, on Sundays Phil does, unless I'm already awake and feeling up for it.

Saturday morning we eventually get dressed and head downstairs for breakfast. There is more time then, so we sometimes have time to make pancakes or cook some eggs. We then head out of the house around 8:00 to go to music class. Class is 8:30-9:30 and then we usually head home, but will sometimes stop on the way to run some errands (today we stopped at a friend's house to pick up some stuff, then went to Office Depot, then to a cake/candy/cookie making supply store). When we get home from class/errands usually Daddy takes over for a while.

Lunch is usually around 11 or 11:30 then playing (outside or in) until it's time to get ready for nap (yes, our almost 4 year old still naps!!) around 1 pm. He's usually in bed around 1:30 and sleeps for 1.5 to up to 3+ hours (depending on when he got up/what his week sleep has been like). While he naps, I do work, if needed, or relax. Often times Phil will nap while LB is also napping (something that I just don't do). Then, when he awakes, more playing, hanging out, maybe a trip to the park, maybe a walk, maybe just playing at home.

Then the usual evening of dinner and bedtime routine.

Sunday is similar except that Daddy gets up and I get to sleep in. Usually when I get up, I take over for a while and give Daddy a chance to relax.

We will often times head to the supermarket on Sunday mornings, or run other errands as needed. Lunch and nap is similar to Saturday. Most Sunday nights we have dinner with the in-laws, who like to try to have dinner with us (and their other kids) as often as they can.

When he was little, we were adamant about not messing with his bedtime and evening routine, we've relaxed that now and sometimes we go out for dinner with friends or family.

Occasionally we have a movie night planned by a friend one weeknight, and in that case, we have a babysitter who comes over after dinner and get's him ready for bed and into bed. Luckily, we've found some babysitters who he likes and who seem to be good with him.

As one of my colleagues puts it, I have a rich social life. I've posted about this in my blog recently, it's both a blessing and a curse. I love my friends, but sometimes there's just too much to do and I don't get the down time that I need. Two Saturday's a month, we have games at our house which generally run noon-6pm or later. Then there are all the other things that come up. We rarely have a weekend with NOTHING on the calendar (next weekend looks pretty empty, which is GREAT since I have to finish prepping stuff for LB's b-day party the following weekend).

I think I covered it all, in more detail than most of you probably cared to read. Putting it all down on paper, it really does seem as busy and it feels. Sometimes I wonder if he is overscheduled-he's only almost 4 now, but I can't figure out which class to skip either, as he enjoys them all.