Work From Home Couple

When you both work from home, and you happen to have a 1-year-old tearing through the house, the big question becomes: Who watches the baby? And when?

Some days, the preferred answer is “Not me!” Realistically, though, someone always has to watch the baby. If we didn’t, the little guy’d end up at the bottom of the stairs with an avalanche of pots and pans on his curly-haired head. He’s good at getting into things.

So, my wife and I sat down and created a schedule. This is something you have to do if you both work from home. Ours goes like this: When our son wakes up at 5 or 5:30 in the morning — he’s like a clock in this — I get up with him. I stay with him until about 8:30 a.m., when my wife takes the baby along with her as she walks our 9-year-old son to fourth grade. I work until 11:30 a.m., when I feed the baby his lunch and my wife does whatever she needs to do. I stay with the baby until 1 p.m., when I go back to work until our son wakes up from his afternoon nap, usually around 4 p.m. I then have him until his bedroom, 7 p.m. on the dot! I’ll often work in the evenings, but that is on my own time, and we have to be careful not to be working all the time. We want to spend time with our older son and, of course, with ourselves, too.

It works for us. And, yes, it does get tiring. And there are days when we have to be flexible. But for the most part, we stick to the schedule.

If we didn’t? I don’t think either of us would get anything done. And that’s one thing you can’t have. Two work-from-home paychecks can shrink awfully fast when no one’s working consistently.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS