Today’s episode of Best of Both Worlds is both about “rest” (with a broader vision of “rest” to mean downtime in general) and making the rest in any given family fair.

To that end, we advocate that in two parent families with young kids, couples officially trade off who is actively on with the kids during various stretches of non-working hours. This can look different for different families (one party takes Saturday morning, the other takes Saturday afternoon, or maybe one party covers more during the work week and thus gets Saturday “off”). It can be extended to cover longer periods of time too (each party gets a long weekend away for solo travel or travel with friends, for instance).

We answer various objections to this concept, and talk about variations that single parents can adopt.

In the Q&A we address a question from a listener who is looking to get back into the workforce at age 29. She’s young enough that she can do anything, including training for a completely different career. So, what should she do?

Please give the episode a listen! We welcome ratings and reviews. Also, in our Patreon community this week, we’re discussing how a mom with multiple young kids might manage things while her partner is going to be traveling 3 days a week for the next 3 months.

Of course there is more to fall than simply peak October leaves. In my part of Pennsylvania, September is something of a bridge month, technically late summer most of the time, but feeling different, with the light slanting and the overgrown green mottling around the edges. November is one of my favorite months of the year. It starts with blazing red maples, travels through the harvest themes of Thanksgiving, and ends with the coming coziness of the holidays.

Anyway, all that is to say that fall deserves its own seasonal fun list. So here it is — the things I want to do to really appreciate this season!

Go to Maine. A work trip to Portland – one of the cutest cities ever. Lobster must be consumed at some point. In September in Maine, there’s already a nip of fall in the evening and early morning air.

Run a half marathon. Fall is for distance running and I have a race coming up soon. I’m not as trained as I’d like. I never am. But I have done two 10-milers and two 8-milers and so it could be worse.

See the bird migration. We could visit either Cape May or Hawk Mountain — both have some fantastic bird watching in early fall.

Take a leaf peeping trip. We’re planning to go visit my brother in upstate New York for a weekend. We went for his wedding last year and had such a wonderful time. In future years I’d like to make a Vermont/New Hampshire type trip during the peak foliage season. There are some road routes that are known for being fabulous.

Go on a fall hike. Closer to home perhaps, but I want to get the kids out for some long walks in pretty leaves.

Go to a Halloween-themed event. We will go to at least one “Boo at the Zoo” type extravaganza — maybe that or a theme park Halloween fest. My 12-year-old wore his inflatable T-rex costume to the zoo last year and the cheetahs were totally tracking him and eyeing him as a threat!

Drink apple cider/go apple picking. So we already went apple picking once (to get Honeycrisps while they are ripe!) but I’m happy to go again. I’m sure I can find some sort of Cider Fest around here and make a day of it.

Listen to fall-themed music. Listening to Appalachian Spring was such a cool part of that season this year and so I’d like to pick a seasonally appropriate classical work and get to know it well. But what should that be? Other than Vivaldi’s Four Seasons I’m not sure!

Take family photos. This isn’t always “fun” per se in the moment, but I’m happy to have them, and peak fall leaves is a good time (they make pretty Christmas cards).

Celebrate the launch of Tranquility by Tuesday! I just started my official pre-order campaign. Order before October 11 and you’ll get an early excerpt, a TBT Scorecard so you can track how you’re doing on the rules, an invite to a Zoom book discussion in October and early access to my TBT In Real Life videos. If you pre-order just fill out the forms on this page to get the bonuses. Thank you!

What’s on your fall fun list?

Here’s what was on my list, and how it went! Mostly pretty good. It was a good summer. A little exhausting at times, but pretty good.

Go fruit picking. I wanted to get strawberries, peaches, and apples. I’m happy to report that in three rounds of fruit picking, all of this happened. Strawberries in June (they weren’t great though — not sure if it was the place or the weather), peaches in July (quite yummy even if Linvilla is sometimes a zoo), and then Honeycrisp apples at Indian Orchards. The last was a Labor Day weekend event — while people often think of apples as a fall fruit, my favorite varieties (Honeycrisp, Gala) actually ripen in late summer. I’ve missed out on them a few years so now I make sure to go early. We never made it to Maple Acres, which I mentioned in the original post. I like them, but their hours and fruit availability didn’t quite match up for us this summer.

Visit a farmers market. I went twice to our local Bryn Mawr Farmers Market, which happens every Saturday morning. We got some fun fruits and breads and various whimsical finds. This will definitely be a good thing to do any future summer Saturday mornings when we happen to be around.

Go tubing on a river. In July, I took two of my kids up to Easton to tube down the Delaware River. I enjoyed this, though I think they found it a little dull to float along a river for two hours. Oh well. I guess either I go tubing by myself next summer or I organize a big group to go (more people probably makes the floating more exciting).

Relax and enjoy our June family vacation. My goal was to have “at least a few truly enjoyable moments,” and that happened. I liked snorkeling along an underwater signed trail at one of St. John’s most famous beaches, and my husband and I had a great dinner at a secluded restaurant along the water. I also had fun night kayaking with my oldest kid.

Visit Ocean Grove, NJ. I did this three times — two day trips, including one this past weekend, and our week long vacation there in August. We hit most of the big places, including the Silverball Arcade and Days Ice Cream, where I enjoyed my frozen concoctions, even if they were made from oats. (I try not to think about that too much). New additions this year include brunch at Toast in Asbury, and getting lobster rolls from Cousins Maine Lobster, which has a location on the boardwalk in Asbury. I’m now obsessed with their blueberry soda. Hopefully we’ve got the house for 2 weeks next summer — fingers crossed! It is my happy place.

Do Mommy Days with the kids. I wrote that my 12-year-old mentioned camping. We did not do that, though he is going with his boy scout troop in two weeks. I managed to do five one-on-one excursions with five kids. I was not sure this was going to happen given the various childcare complications we had this summer but I set it as a goal for August and did it. The Mommy Days included NYC for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child + the World Trade Center Observatory (15-year-old), lobster from the food truck + Dave and Busters (12-year-old), Panera + a Mommy-and-Me spa visit (10-year-old), Chuck E. Cheese (7-year-old), and Sesame Place (2 year old). Phew!

See Mary Chapin Carpenter at Longwood Gardens. Yep – this was a lot of fun, and though the concert was delayed for rain, it wound up being a perfect night. I’ve been humming Halley Came to Jackson all week.

Do morning runs. I often run during the morning on weekends (such as this past weekend, when I did a 10 miler to prep for an upcoming half marathon…), but weekdays need to be a summer thing with the school schedule. I woke up early several weekday mornings this summer and went for runs before the rest of the house was stirring. It was great to get it done and I’m glad I made this happen. I’m not inspired to wake up at 5:30 to make it happen during the school year but I’m glad it happened in the summer!

Enjoy my new hammock. I’m off to go do that after I finish writing a draft of this… The pool (also mentioned in this item) is half-renovated. We went in a few times, though something went wrong again and it’s a little green at the moment…

Unpack. Not the whole house but I do want to give myself credit here. The teenager’s room got unpacked because my mother-in-law moved in there for three weeks. I got the guest room cleared out and bought a new mattress and bedding for it AND got the junk truck to come remove the old mattress. We also set up a futon in there so it’s great for visitors or sleep overs. Theoretically 4 people could sleep in there now. Alas, that was the signal for the two third floor bathrooms to start leaking and thus not be usable until they are renovated (they are the only bathrooms we didn’t renovate originally…of course…).

Plan something fun for Labor Day. I loved going to Maine at the end of last summer but I’m doing that for work soon! Plus we traveled a lot already this summer. So Labor Day weekend has been slightly more local. We did manage to have a good weekend though — with a day trip to the beach, and apple picking, and then my husband and I going out for an anniversary dinner with our 15-year-old serving as the babysitter. It was a moment — like we have finally arrived at that stage as parents…

There were a few other great memories that happened that weren’t on the original list!

Las Vegas. I went in late June to speak at a conference, and due to the timing of my two talks, I was there for three nights. It was a blast. I took advantage of the restaurants and shows and even went on the lazy river at my resort all by myself.

Dutch Wonderland. During a week of very limited childcare I took the kids to this little theme park as part of Camp Mommy. It wasn’t particularly grand, but my 2-year-old got to go on a kiddie roller coaster and he loved it so much. So we will probably go back this fall.

The Wolf Sanctuary of PA. I took my three older kids here last week. My 12-year-old had been supposed to go a few years ago. The trip got canceled and he had been sad about that at the time. So we said we would go back, but they were closed with Covid for quite a while, and then now have been selling out on tours fairly quickly. But I managed to snag a private tour for us when a date opened up. It was really cool seeing wolves up close, and listening to the howling. It did not make me think well of humanity, hearing the stories of how many wolves wound up in a rescue sanctuary, but the animals were amazing.

Recording the TBT In Real Life videos. I am so excited to show these soon! Recording for two days in various locations was an adventure and something I hadn’t done much before.

Massachusetts over the Fourth of July. I enjoyed fireworks and a small town Independence Day parade.

Biking with my husband. We went on a 10-mile bike ride together along the Schuylkill River Trail a few weeks ago and it was a different sort of date that was quite fun.

So that’s 2022! I’ll write a Fall Fun List soon, and am already thinking ahead to summer 2023…

Longtime readers (and podcast listeners) know that my husband planned this trip. I planned the summer camp schedule; he planned the summer vacation. This came together fairly last minute (in May). We chatted with the kids and learned that they wanted to do a resort. I said it needed to be a direct flight, and my preference was to not travel internationally, given all the Covid testing rigamarole for international travel — though that was dropped in early June. All this is ironic since it turned out the U.S. Virgin Islands still had a testing protocol for everyone until early June as well, including US visitors, so choosing a “domestic” destination didn’t matter on that front (though fortunately that was dropped by the time we went), AND we turned out to sort of need our passports (you go through customs at the St. Thomas airport on the return flight to the mainland — apparently you don’t absolutely need a passport but it goes fastest with something showing citizenship, and how often do you travel with your children’s birth certificates?).

My husband searched the usual spots. We’d had the Westin St. John on our radar for a while but it was always booked up. But then, lo and behold, when he searched in early May, there was a 3-bedroom villa available for our dates. So we took it. The price was actually reasonable vs. many of the other resorts and there was a direct flight from Newark to St. Thomas with seats for 8 people (our nanny came with us, which was good since it turned out the kids club was mostly closed). Ferry service from St. Thomas to St. John is fairly frequent.

Anyway, we had a good time. There were some rough moments. Flying with a toddler is painful. I wound up nursing him for reasonable chunks of both flights, and he would then sleep while half-nursing. Perhaps the AAP should have included this in their recent guidelines about breastfeeding for two years — forget the nutrition, it’s about making plane flights bearable for your fellow passengers…He also slept in a crib in the room with my husband and me and the close quarters didn’t make for great sleep, though it was better than last summer during our resort trip when the longest stretch of sleep I got for the entire week was 3 hours. No kids got sick, which is great, but my husband got an ear infection from diving and wound up experiencing the finest of St. John’s urgent care facilities. We all got sunburned (except the toddler) despite our best efforts.

My goal (from the Summer Fun List) was to have at a few enjoyable moments, and that definitely happened. We did some great snorkeling — I liked Trunk Bay in particular (we rented a Jeep and my husband braved island driving — on the left side — to bring us to a few cool beaches). We rented a sail boat for a day. My husband and I went on a sunset cruise and saw a double rainbow over St. John. The certified divers in our group did several dives. I went on a night kayak trip with my oldest kid and we saw tons of tarpons under our clear-bottom boat. My husband and I ate dinner at Zozo’s, which is a cool beach front restaurant in the remains of a resort that was mostly destroyed in the double hurricanes a few years ago. That was an experience — parking, and having the shuttle take you through the ruins, which are crawling with deer. I enjoyed the Westin’s frozen margaritas and my kids really got into their smoothies sipped pool side. I read for 30 minutes on the beach hammock one afternoon. I developed a taste for the resort deli’s curry chicken salad sandwiches.

The trip home was long, but we made it, getting back to the house at 12:10 a.m. early Sunday morning. Then my husband and oldest kid left at 9 a.m. to go to the airport to get a flight to camp. Fortunately, we’d packed one duffle full of the dorm stuff before we left on vacation, and did the 15-year-old’s laundry in our villa, so we just had to add a few more cooler-weather items and he was ready to go. He seems to be enjoying himself. I was on a flight to Las Vegas that evening. Flying business class, solo, is a very different experience than flying in economy with a toddler!

In other news: Speaking of vacation, my Medium column this week looks at “The Question that Reveals if a Habit is Right for You.” Namely, would you do this habit on vacation? I did read my Shakespeare! I did not try to run five miles daily or anything like that. One habit is sustainable in my life and one just…isn’t.

Photo: Turquoise waters…I don’t know who this person is floating in the water but this was the closest I could get to a no-people shot…

(Side note: My pre-2016 blog photos look quite grainy…But there are definitely things that seem to be on the list each year!)

This will be our first summer in the new house. It’s also shaping up to be quite a full season, which is the reality of having 5 active kids who all have their own interests. Nonetheless, I’m sure there will still be downtime, as there always is. Several nights this week some of us spent time playing outside on the new play set, lounging on the hammock, watering plants, and so forth. We have a lot of camps, but much of August is camp-free so that might be the part of the summer where the children go feral.

Here’s what I’m planning this summer to make summer feel like summer to me:

Go fruit picking. I am just combining this as one entry. Strawberry picking always kicks off the season. Then it’s peach and blueberry picking in late July. Honeycrisp apples ripen in late August. For any other Philadelphia-area folks, we like Maple Acres Farm for strawberries and Weaver’s Orchard for the rest (other varieties of apples trend into fall, so that’s a different fun list!).

Visit a farmers’ market. We visit the farm stands at the orchards/farms we visit, but I’d like to check out a multi-vendor type place. Suggestions welcome! There’s a local one that happens on Saturdays that would be easy to try but I could go solo on a weekday somewhere more far flung.

Go tubing on a river. We did this for the first time last summer and it was a lot of fun!

Relax and enjoy our June family vacation. The hotel and flights are booked, but traveling with all of us can be an ordeal. My goal is to have at least a few truly enjoyable moments. How’s that for a low bar? I want my remembering self to be glad we did it AND to enjoy parts during the vacation itself.

Visit Ocean Grove, NJ. We’ll take our annual trip in August. I’ll run along the boardwalk, visit the beer garden, eat breakfast on the rental house’s big porch (same house as always), take the kids to the pinball arcade, and make nightly pilgrimages to Day’s Ice Cream. Sadly, I will probably be eating the non-dairy ice cream instead of the chocolate peanut butter ice cream I love but I am slowly making my peace with that.

Do Mommy Days with the kids. These one-on-one days doing something each child chooses have been requested and so I will do my best. The 12-year-old mentioned camping, so maybe he and I will be pitching a tent somewhere! (I’m wondering if the backyard counts…)

See Mary Chapin Carpenter at Longwood Gardens. Outdoor music in summer is always great. I have tickets for this. I’m also taking some of the kids to see a live taping of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me in Philly.

Do morning runs. The camp schedule starts later than the school schedule, so this could definitely happen. Maybe once a week or so? And maybe I could do some evening runs along the river too.

Enjoy my hammock. And balcony. The new house has a lot of ways to experience the outside. The pool is under renovation so that may or may not be part of the summer.

Unpack. So this isn’t necessarily fun, but I’m putting it on the list to hold myself accountable. I am going to take a few days this summer to make solid progress on getting rid of the remaining boxes. Most of the kids’ rooms are box free but the teenager’s room is not. I also need to get the guest room cleared out and set up (buy a mattress, etc.) so that can be used for overnight guests. I’ve been putting them in the 12-year-old’s room and kicking him out.

Plan something fun for Labor Day. Last year we went to Maine, which I loved, but I’ll be going to Maine the week after Labor Day for work, so I’ll get my fix then. Most likely we’ll do something else. But it’s nice to end the summer with one last hurrah.

What’s on your summer fun list? If you post on your own website, feel free to link!

Someone needs to watch him constantly. We’ve baby-proofed a section of the basement but someone needs to be there with him, and with four other children, the baby-proofing is hard to keep perfect (I found random pieces of paper in there yesterday that he naturally tried to eat). Constant vigilance does not make for a relaxing weekend. But five kids in, this stage is not a surprise. So we’re back to the Official Toddler Hand-off around here to ensure that both parents get their downtime.

Sunday in particular we wound up with nothing formal on the calendar. Another snowstorm dropped at least six inches during the morning and early afternoon, and so the kids’ activities were canceled. My husband and I decided to trade off every 90 minutes around nap time. Like alarms set and everything.

I can attest that 90 minutes spent watching a toddler definitely feels longer than 90 minutes not spent watching a toddler. However, 90 minutes also doesn’t feel endless like a full day stuck at home can. I got a treadmill run in, finished my 1000-piece puzzle, did Legos with the 11-year-old, took some of the big kids sledding, and, with the addition of nap time, helped the 9-year-old clean off the two craft tables in the basement to make them usable.

If it had been possible to go anywhere, then a longer window might have made more sense. One party might do the morning, one party might cover post-nap to bedtime (in a one-nap scenario, which is where we’ll be in a month or two). But for a snowy day, the official 90-minute hand-off worked pretty well. So we’ll probably be repeating it until things warm up around here.

Do you do weekend trade-offs?

In other news: This post reminds me, again, that I am in awe of single parents.

In other other news: Amazon had a one-day sale on the ebook version of 168 Hours over the weekend (I sent a blast out to my weekend newsletter list about it Saturday when it happened). It was so fun to see a book that came out eleven years ago climb up the Kindle ranks. One of my goals for the year has been to sell my “back catalog” as the publishing industry calls it. Between the Kindle sale, Drew Barrymore holding up a copy of I Know How She Does It on air, and a large virtual book club reading All the Money in the World, I’ve now seen bumps for three titles. Now I just need a celebrity to mention Juliet’s School of Possibilities or Off the Clock…

Photo: Intrigued, but unsure about the snow thing…

Groundhog Day has entered the cultural lexicon as much for the 1993 movie as for the groundhog’s actual antics. The movie’s plot proposes one of those great existential questions: how would you live if you had to live a particular day over and over again?

I probably wouldn’t choose February 2, 2021 as my day to live over and over again, but it was not bad. Indeed, it was pretty good. A key reason it was good was that I decided to “upgrade” some of my leisure time activities. This made the discretionary time I had for the day a lot more fun.

Some of this was because, hey — snow day! We tend not to have a snow cover all winter so it’s fun when it’s fresh. We went for a family sledding expedition in the afternoon. This was quick — in the car at 3:20, home for 4:00 calls — but it was really fun to go careening down a big and snowy hill (adults too!)

I tromped through the snow in the backyard when I had another 20 minute break. I don’t love shoveling, but marching through unbroken snow feels a little magical.

I seized 20 minutes when my husband had the baby and before I planned to start dinner to sit in the tub and read a magazine. I bought a new tub as part of our master bathroom renovation a few years ago and I had the thought the other day that my 6-year-old and 1-year-old are the ones who use it most. Enough of that! I kicked the tub toys out and enjoyed a quick soak.

After putting the baby to bed, I made serious progress on the 1000-piece puzzle I’m doing. The particular section I did was flowers — a colorful escape from a snowy day.

And finally, after the other children were in their rooms, I read some poetry. I’d been thinking of Li-Young Lee’s poem “From Blossoms,” with its image of peaches, so I went to look that up and then read some of his other work while doing so. I read a lot, but I don’t read a lot of poetry, so that made my reading time feel more memorable.

The day had its frustrations, of course (so much shoveling…and the usual measure of kid woes). But there was a lot of fun, too. Some moments of tranquility…even on a Tuesday.

When you decide to “upgrade” your leisure time, what do you do?

In other news: Another leisure time upgrade — listening to a podcast! I was a guest on one of my regular listens, How to Money, on Monday. I was also a guest on Movie Therapy with Rafer & Kristen, which you can listen to here! What should a girl who loved What Not to Wear watch next?