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.

Anyway, here’s what I said we’d do, and here’s how it went.

Go to a baseball game. Yep. My husband, 14-year-old, and I went to a Phillies game in June. I enjoyed this and would be willing to go more often though I’m not sure it was anyone else’s favorite. I did not order a beer there (we had a long trip coming up the next day) but I did go to beer gardens twice — once at a local place, and once at Longwood Gardens. The beer garden in Asbury Park is closed so we were not able to go there, alas.

Bike. I went biking solo a fair amount. My bike fits into the back of my car (or what was my car…I guess it’s mostly my son’s now but I still haven’t managed to get a new one…) so I’ve been driving it to a local trail. I can be done with the whole thing in about 90 minutes for a 50-minute bike ride, so that certainly fit on some slower afternoons. We did one family bike ride with 6 out of 7 of us. We did buy another adult bike so now we could do all 7 and may try over the fall.

Do some early AM runs. I have been running more seriously this summer now that I’m signed up for an October half marathon. I definitely did some morning runs (heck, I ran on the treadmill this morning), though my favorites were on the boardwalk over the beach trip. And in Central Park! I took the 17-year-old to NYC for several days (definitely a summer highlight too — though that June trip seems like ages ago now) and I had a lovely 5 mile run around the reservoir.

Go in the hot tub at night. We wound up doing a lot of evening pool trips, which tended to end in the hot tub. This was a great way to get in some TOAD time (time outside after dinner) when it was getting dark late. Now that dark is descending earlier I’m happy we got the pool lights fixed. It feels like something always needs to be fixed on the pool but so it goes. I’m not sure how often I’ll go in the pool with cooler temperatures, but the hot tub should be good for another few weeks (we’ll close it in October).

Go to the beach. Yep, we had a lovely two weeks there in August, same house as usual. I have rebooked for 2025! We did all the usual traditions, including pinball, ice cream, and lobster rolls.

Go to a farmers market. I went to the local one once (maybe twice? trying to remember). This is an item that I’d like to have be more of a summer thing but our local market isn’t that big. Maybe some summer when we’re traveling somewhere…

Do all my research for Big Time. Well, I did my Evening Hours Challenge and have the (significant!) results from that. I’ve got everything set up to run for the Better Workday Challenge in the fall. I did a lot of interviews and I am excited to start writing. I have not done ALL my research but I feel like I have ideas and hooks for most of the chapters. I could write a book with what I have now and I’ll have more material by April 1.

Write summer sonnets. I’ve been writing one a week all summer and, as you might imagine, several are summer related. My favorites are probably the ones I’ve posted here, on tiger lilies, Paris (well, that was more spring), peaches, the beach house, etc. I did listen to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons summer section (and a lot of Bach, but that wasn’t summer related).

Do something one-on-one with each kid. I did not do official Mommy Days but each kid got a fair amount of one-on-one time for something or other. I took the 17-year-old to NYC for three days, which was a major undertaking. The 12-year-old and I went to the Olivia Rodrigo concert, which was a summer highlight I didn’t know would happen at the start of the summer, but was amazing nonetheless.

Try some nice restaurants with the older kids. My husband and I took the 14-year-old to Morimoto. We took the 17-year-old to an Indian place. I took both boys to Morton’s steakhouse after the Scotland screw-up. The 17-year-old and I went to some nice places in NYC. My husband and I took the older three out for Mexican a few weeks ago and that was fun.

Look at the stars. Well, I looked up. And time in the hot tub at night counts! There was no camping. I’ve realized that camping is something I like in the abstract but am not so keen on in the execution.

Buy some alternatives to shorts. I’ve been pretty happy with my summer wardrobe — particularly my cropped/frayed Nic + Zoe jeans. Now I just have to figure out winter (though I can probably keep wearing these jeans probably for a while…they’re not that cropped because I’m not that tall…).

In terms of other cool stuff, I’m happy that my four older children all had the opportunity to experience a week or more away from home. My older two boys each went to academic camps for three weeks, and the 9-year-old went to sleep-away camp for two weeks. My daughter went to visit cousins for a week. I love hanging out with my older kids when they’re home and I also think it’s important for kids to have some time to develop their independence, where they are figuring out who they are apart from family dynamics. Time off on their own helps build a lot of skills. They all handled it pretty well.

I’ve already got some fun stuff in the works for Summer 2025! So stay tuned for that list next May…