Yesterday I wrote about how our mornings were shifting. Today, it’s on to the other side of the day.

I was definitely looking to refine our household evening schedules. The older kids are not exactly looking to go to bed early. If screens are an option, it’s hard to get people to do other things (like read). Because I have older kids, my youngest child in particular had a hard time going down while everyone else was up and about the house. That meant that I felt like I had very little downtime after he went to bed (or after the others went to bed, for that matter).

Last year I had enforced an “In room with no devices time” of 9 p.m. I’d go around and turn out lights at 10 p.m….if I wasn’t still dealing with the 4-year-old, whose bedtime can be long and involved. As parents of older kids have probably experienced themselves, sometimes when I went in to turn people’s lights out, they’d decide this was the perfect time to talk to me and…

Since the high school now starts an hour later (8:30 a.m. vs. 7:30 a.m. this year) I had visions of everyone’s bedtimes drifting later and later and I was not excited about that. So I decided that the official “In room with no devices time” would move back to 8:30 p.m.

There was actually not too much resistance to this, which I am grateful for. I think it helps that the older kids can still have their (school) laptops to do homework, so they can play music and honestly could be on (limited parts of) the web if they wanted to — they just aren’t texting their friends or watching YouTube. The older boys also have a fair amount of homework (and college applications!) so if they go to bed around 10:30 p.m., the 8:30 p.m. in room time gives them a reasonable two hours for work (and shower), which they kind of need.

Because everyone is up in their rooms, I can have the 4-year-old in his room at 8:30 p.m. I know that sounds late for a little guy, but he doesn’t have to be up in the morning until 8:15 a.m. and some number of days he actually sleeps until then! We go up, sometimes take a bath, read stories, and he is usually in his bed before 9 p.m. Unfortunately, I often still have to sit in there for a while, but he is asleep somewhere between 9-9:30 p.m. (if it is taking a while he has started to allow me to leave while he plays with toys in his bed…and then I just come check that he’s fallen asleep later). As soon as he is asleep, I go around and say goodnight to the big kids, have quick chats, but I don’t turn off their lights. They can deal with that on their own. Since there are no phones/ipads/Nintendo switches they will not stay up all night.

The only one who’s had some struggles with this is the 9-year-old. He’s not been a huge fan of independent reading. He’ll do art in his room, or quietly (sort of quietly) play with toys. And my husband has been reading Harry Potter out loud to him during this window. But my husband doesn’t exactly want to read to him for 90 minutes so this is something of a work in progress. We’ve been trying all sorts of books to entice him toward independent reading. One surprise hit was an Oahu guidebook, so go figure. I’m hoping he’ll build the habit over time.

But in the meantime, I’ve been a fan of this new routine. One complication: If I am not home at 8:30…it doesn’t always happen. Yes, this is a source of frustration. But I have been working on some solutions to this — it turns out kids can be good enforcers of their siblings following the rules!

This can be frustrating…or it can be an opportunity.

We’re only a week and change into the 2024-2025 school year, so I don’t want to make sweeping statements, but so far I’m happy with our schedule changes. Today’s post talks about mornings, and then I’ll do one later this week on evenings.

The biggest change is that the high school now starts an hour later than it used to (8:30 a.m. vs. 7:30 a.m.). This move was years in the making, and is supported by a ton of research showing that adolescents are not at their best early in the morning.

The result is that my older boys don’t need to get up until 7:30 a.m. (They could probably get up a little later, but they like to get to school on the earlier side. My 17-year-old is driving, and wants to back into his parking spot so he can get out of the parking lot earlier on the other end…but since he is driving a 2011 car that does absolutely nothing to assist you on the parking front, this is hard if the neighboring spots are already taken!).

To accommodate this, the middle school start time moved earlier. This is not awesome (middle schoolers are adolescents too) but it only moved 15 minutes earlier, from 8:15 to 8:00 a.m., so not terrible. Unfortunately, the school system did not magically procure more buses, so our assigned pick up time for the middle school bus was early enough to negate all the wins of the later high school start time. SO…we decided to drive the 7th grader.

Generally, the person driving her leaves around 7:40. If necessary, this person could leave closer to 7:30 in order to be home before the high schoolers absolutely have to leave. That means the high schoolers could stay with the little boys if need be. I try to set up household schedules so that one adult can cover if necessary!

To leave at 7:40, the seventh grader can get up around 7 a.m. or even a little later. This is a pretty major lifestyle boost that no one in the house has to get up before 7 a.m. (I am almost universally up before then, but it definitely buys some margin in the morning).

Meanwhile, the elementary school does not start until 9:10 a.m. Children cannot be dropped off until — wait for it — 8:55 a.m. Whoever is doing the little kid run generally leaves at 8:50, drops the 4th grader off between 8:55 and 9:00, then heads over to the (nearby) preschool to drop the 4-year-old off late. (We could do it in the opposite order, but the elementary school pushes back more on tardies. Also, theoretically the 4th grader could take the bus, but the stop is by a busy road so someone would need to wait for him and then drive the 4-year-old in the same direction as the elementary school, so this doesn’t really help matters.)

Another change: 3 mornings a week, our FT nanny is starting at 7:30 a.m. On these mornings, if I’m not driving the 7th grader (my husband tends to do it if he’s home), I say good morning to the big boys, talk to them for a few minutes, and then I aim to be at my desk by 7:40. Mornings are really my most productive time, and I wind up doing a lot of kid shuttling later in the day, so I like starting work earlier. Honestly, I love this. The past few early start days I’ve felt giddy realizing how much I’ve gotten done by 8:30 a.m. I have definitely gotten a ton done by 9:30 a.m., which is when I would be at my desk if we didn’t have morning childcare.

There are variations. On Wednesdays and Fridays childcare hours start later. On Wednesday I can be at my desk at 9 and Friday it will be more like 9:30 (usually; my husband will do some of these mornings too). My 17-year-old has a “free” during first period one out of every four days, so the 14-year-old takes the bus on those days and the 17-year-old goes in late. I have told them I am not keeping track of this — they can work it out. If the middle school jazz band meets before school (as it did last year) that will change everything up a few days per week.

But at the moment the schedule has some big benefits over years past, so yay. Some mornings I get up at 6:30 a.m. and run on the treadmill before the 7 a.m. kid stuff. That’s what I did this morning and I’m hoping to convince myself to do that roughly 2 mornings per week. Some mornings I drift up and just enjoy a quiet cup of coffee before 7 a.m. With the light coming through the living room window, it is…nice.

So in that spirit, this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds is all about that back-to-school energy. Sarah and I discuss what will be new for our families this year (in my case, a driver with his own parking spot! And kid #5 goes to full-day school… plus all the school start times have changed).

The new school year is always a time when routines change and new logistics must be figured out. That can be stressful…but it’s also an opportunity to buy yourself some school supplies while shopping for your kids. So there’s that too.

In any case, please give the episode a listen! What’s new for your family this year?

We discuss schedules, activities, lunches, homework, and recreating that back-to-school vibe for yourself. In the question section we discuss one-on-one days with kids. How do we manage those, and how do we make them feel fair?

Please give the episode a listen, and as always we welcome ratings and reviews!

(I apologize for the late posting on this one, a few days after the episode was released. This is the first time I have had wifi on my laptop in days — but more on that soon!)

We got the windows clean, the roof fixed (hello Hurricane Ida…), mums planted and — not coincidentally — photos taken of the outside of the current house for its upcoming listing. I’m a bit scared about the inside photos as there is just a lot of stuff. Seven people living in a house will do that, and in nice real estate photos, the rooms don’t even have waste baskets. But we will go room to room I guess and move stuff out and stage it and move it back.

In the meantime, the week also featured soccer, baseball, karate, math tutoring, Science Olympiad practice, gymnastics, my choir practice, alto sax practice + lessons, and the discovery that my daughter chose the trumpet as her instrument for school band/lessons…she was so torn between that and the clarinet. Here’s hoping she chose well. (Any advice from trumpet players out there?) I also bought presents for and planned her upcoming birthday.

In any case, we are now barreling into the last three months of the year. The fourth quarter of the year is a festive one (Halloween! Thanksgiving! Christmas!). It’s also an opportunity to end the year strong. On the work front, this is especially true for any organizations that do end-of-year-performance reviews. It should not be the case that what happens in October matters more than what happens in February but…we’re human. We naturally remember recent things better. So the next few weeks would be a great time to figure out a professional goal that is doable and get it done. Landing one big new client. Writing a white paper. Organizing that (virtual) brown bag lunch learning session. In my case, I plan to finish editing Tranquility by Tuesday during Q4, including (hopefully!) doing a short writing retreat that will allow me to focus on it for a few days without dealing with the window cleaning, kid shuttling madness that follows me around at home. We will see if I attempt NaNoWriMo. That might be biting off more than I can chew.

On the personal front, there is still time to achieve a goal or two that would make the year feel great. If you’re looking for a reason to run or walk more regularly, you could sign up for a turkey trot style 5k and definitely be in better shape for it just shy of 8 weeks from today. In general, three months is a lot of time. It’s not infinite, but it’s enough to do a lot. I hope. I plan to list this house (I won’t set a goal of selling it because that’s not within my control), finish with the renovations at the new one, and start the process of moving in.

I will finish War and Peace. I’m on page 1172 of 1455. I’m really enjoying this slow pace of reading one chapter a day. It matches up well enough in places on the calendar with the action in the story that I wonder if Tolstoy had that in mind. September’s chapters featured the invasion and burning of Moscow and the aftermath…and that is when it happened. So the early fall landscape descriptions seem incredibly apt.

My husband was traveling some this week too, and so I had a few solo mornings (well, solo until 8, but the morning often starts around 5:30 here). I have been really happy to have older children in addition to a toddler. This morning the 12-year-old built forts with him while I took a shower. It was so much more relaxing than trying to shower with the toddler in the bathroom. We take our victories where we can get them. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Photo: Progress on my fall-themed 1000-piece puzzle

Speaking of the new house, it is coming along. I felt happy with the floor stain color (“Golden oak”), and my selection for main staircase runner carpet. I am less thrilled about the tile I chose for the master bathroom shower, but since it’s in there now, I’m going to see if it grows on me.

I went to the elementary school’s back-to-school night this week. My 6-year-old had created a family portrait for his “All about me” page that, curiously, contained only him, my husband, me and the dog. I guess all other family members are extraneous… (Go visit me on Instagram, @lvanderkam, to see it).

My second eldest turns 12 today. I always reflect on his birth on his birthday because the whole experience was so ridiculous. We still lived in NYC. I was supposed to be induced but the hospital sent us home or back to the doctor’s office twice because it was so busy. People were in intense labor in the hallways. One might reflect that 9/24 is almost exactly nine months after Christmas, so perhaps it was always going to be a busy season. In any case, it was definitely a maybe-we-should-leave-New-York feeling, aside from the maybe-we-should-leave-New-York feeling that comes from having two small kids in an apartment.

(Though since they’re still sharing a bedroom in my suburban house…)

We’ll do a family celebration tonight, and a small friend celebration tomorrow. He has an appointment for his first vaccine dose set too.

Thanks to those who came to my virtual speech this morning for the UNC School of Medicine’s Women in Medical Sciences event. It was a great morning with a lot of good programming. If you are just coming here for the first time because you attended the event, welcome! I blog 3-4 times a week most weeks and there are a lot of time tips and such posted here from the last 13 years or so…

Lots of odds and ends this weekend as we prepare to list the current house. I’m also hoping to make progress on my current puzzle, which is White Mountain’s “Friends in Autumn” scene. A pastoral barn scene with bright red and yellow leaves. The leaves haven’t changed here yet, but I’m trying to embrace the season. I will admit, I’m even looking ahead a season. I ordered the Lego 2021 Christmas set… (but I haven’t ordered the Halloween costumes yet. Have you?)

Photo: This will eventually be my kitchen, but the cabinets aren’t built yet.

But…it kind of has that look. I need the kids to take the bus most days (I will drive the high schooler some days for reasons that will become apparent below, but I do need to have bus service available, which means he needs to take it at least a few times per week).

The high schooler will get on the bus around 6:40 a.m. (!!!). I don’t think he’s been awake at this time in ages. This is also kind of ridiculous, as the school is 8 minutes from our house and starts at 7:30. (The good news is that he is the first kid dropped off in the afternoon — so the afternoon commute will be very short…I wish this were flipped but oh well). The middle schooler gets on the bus at 7:30 (school starts 8:15…though again, it’s only 10 minutes from our house). The elementary kids will get on the bus at 8:30. The toddler has generally been waking up around 6:30 a.m. but that is highly variable. Sometimes more like 6, sometimes closer to 7. Our nanny currently starts at 8 a.m. but that could shift if there was a compelling reason for it.

I think the high schooler will shower the night before and have things ready so he can get up at 6:15, eat a pre-made breakfast and shuffle out the door on his bus days. While I’d love to have this not involve me….I think it will need to involve me. The middle schooler will likely get up at 7:00 and his morning will follow the same format. If needed, the elementary school students can be woken up around 7:45, but they’re often up by then anyway.

At the moment my husband is mostly around too, though that could change. We both think of our workdays as starting at 8 a.m. In the past I’ve waited at the bus stop with the elementary school kids, but I think I am not sure I want to commit to doing that this year.

So…any thoughts on how to make this morning more enjoyable? When should I eat? Shower? Should I try to build some sort of morning routine into this? I do like the idea of morning exercise, and one option would be for me to cover the 6:15-7:15 kid shift and then give the baby (and responsibility for getting the middle schooler out the door) over to my husband and run from 7:15-8 or so at least a few days per week. I could then shower, say goodbye to the kids, and start my work day for real at 8:30.

But I am open to suggestions! If anyone else has multiple bus pick ups staggered over two hours, let me know what your mornings look like….or what my rule should be on when we drive the kid with the really really early pick-up….

Photo: The old coffee maker, now no longer with us…