In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah interviews Nancy Reddy, author of the new book The Good Mother Myth. They talk through many of these myths — those that apply to the early years and the later parenting years too — with a nod to where they came from and where we might go next.

In the Q&A we tackle a question on how to find babysitters. Please give the episode a listen! And please consider joining our Best of Both Worlds Patreon community. This week we’ll be gathering by Zoom on Wednesday at 2 p.m. eastern to discuss “The Adventure Project” — little ways to keep life more interesting.

So it was up and at it, but the slower start was nice. I went for a walk in the snowy woods, and then the 5-year-old and I made a snowman in order to make use of the snowman kit he got for his birthday. It will all be in a puddle later but it was a tiny little adventure, squeezed in around shoveling and getting people out the door.

I have been pondering weekly rhythms lately. No week is ever quite the same around here. There are a lot of moving parts, so I find it helps to have some things be the same week to week. For instance, on Mondays I do a virtual session with my trainer at 12:30, so I don’t have to think about scheduling exercise that day. Monday dinner is always pasta night. This is especially helpful now that I’m usually headed downtown for a rehearsal on Monday nights. It’s quick, and I don’t have to think about it.

Tuesday tends to be a run-on-the-treadmill + resistance training day. Tuesday’s dinner has lately been some iteration of chicken and rice. This week it was with a jar of curry sauce. (People ate in shifts last night with activities.) Tuesday is always Best of Both Worlds podcast release day — I tend to listen to the week’s episode at some point on this day, often on the treadmill (yes, even though I recorded it…I like to listen to it as other people do).

Wednesdays I drive the little boys to school in the mornings. It’s our lighter activity day (no one has anything after 6:30 p.m.) so we aim to do a sit-down-together family dinner. That’s also trash night so everything goes out to the curb. This has become bath night for the little guys too (they do bathe at other points, but I for sure do it this night). We pick up whatever part of the house the cleaning service is doing the next morning. I now think of Wednesdays as Before Breakfast interview days — this is the day those longer episodes come out.

I tend to do my planning on Thursday mornings these days. I know I’ve touted “Plan on Fridays” as a rule…and this is Friday planning, just moved a day up so I can do the upcoming weekend’s plan at the same time. I send around a schedule for the weekend, and I plan what I have coming up the next week professionally and personally (I tend not to send the next week’s family activity schedule until Sunday because changes keep coming in). We generally do breakfast for dinner. Thursday is another choir night for me, this time with my 17-year-old. At some point during the day I practice my music for that.

Friday is another day I take the little boys to school. If we’re home Friday night it’s make-your-own-pizza night, which is generally a hit around here. Well, for most people. Two kids strongly prefer a frozen pizza, so sometimes I throw one of those in the oven too.

There’s a weekly rhythm of activities too…ninja warrior class Mondays, parkour Tuesdays, after school yoga (!) for the 5-year-old on Wednesdays…Anyway, I’m sure all of this will change soon enough, but 6 months into the school year it’s finally starting to feel fairly routine. There are always some changes (see: 2-hour delay) but when the scaffolding is in place I worry slightly less about forgetting things.

While it can be easy to feel gloomy in winter, especially post-holidays, this isn’t inevitable. In this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I talk about winter fun lists, and different activities that can make it enjoyable. Maybe some day I’ll go on a sleigh ride!

Then we pivot to discussing my annual time tracking challenges. Next week (Jan 13-20) a great many of us will be tracking our time together. I’ll post my logs here, and if you’d like to get daily motivational emails from me, you can sign up here. You can download one of my time tracking spreadsheets here (though as you can see, you could easily make your own!)

In the Q&A we tackle a question that’s definitely on my mind: Do I really need to be figuring out summer camp now? Seriously? In January? Didn’t I just make it through the holiday gauntlet???

Please give the episode a listen! As always, we welcome ratings and reviews. And please consider joining our Patreon community. This week we’re discussing snow day kid coverage and work triaging, among other things. Our next virtual meet-up, on January 15th, will cover travel. Membership is $9/month.

There were some cool highlights. Among them:

— A new book deal! I wound up switching agents and publishers over the last year or so, but in April we announced a 2-book deal with Norton. Big Time (current title) will come out in early 2026, and The Golden Hours will come out in 2027. I love writing (and writing long) so I have been reminding myself how grateful I am to have the opportunity to create more books.

— In a totally non-commercial vein: I wrote a handful of sonnets I like. I continued my year-long project of writing two lines a day, thus producing one sonnet a week. Most are eh. Some I like. I’ll likely do a post of my favorite sonnets from 2024 over the next week or two.

— I didn’t really have a banner reading year but I read a lot about my current obsession: the ancient earth. This started with my obsession with non-homo sapiens human species, but then has extended back. My current interest: the end-Permian extinction (when 90 percent of all life died out), and then the Triassic, which was when the earth recovered and life re-evolved. At one point it rained for a million years. I am also obsessed with the Economist’s annual Holiday issue (I tend to read it over the holiday break), and they actually had an article on the Triassic this time around. Bliss!

— Spain with my big boys. This was a trip with a lot of memories, from a horse-drawn carriage ride in Seville (smelling the oranges the whole time!) to a little paella restaurant in Rondo, to bike riding in Madrid. While the weather wasn’t wonderful, we survived that and the upgraded seats home were just the cherry on top ending to a great adventure.

— Paris with my daughter. A college friend suggested we go see Taylor Swift in Paris, so we did. Taylor was exciting but it was also fun to see art, eat crepes, cruise on the Seine, and enjoy gorgeous spring weather. She and I had fun at the Olivia Rodrigo concert over the summer as well. I took my 17-year-old to NYC for a long weekend and enjoyed that, particularly our sunset boat cruise and seeing MJ the Musical.

— Fall leaves. I went to Maine twice this fall and really enjoyed the scenery — including seeing the Northern Lights in Portland.

— Singing in the B-Minor Mass. This has been on my List of 100 Dreams for years, and this year it finally happened. I listened to all of Bach this year as well, and so getting to learn this piece even better was a fitting capstone to the project. My church choir sang Brahms’ Requiem, which was also cool.

— I hosted a “progressive” dinner party in the spring where we moved to different places for different courses.

— I ate at my favorite Mexican restaurant many times.

— I went to many botanical gardens. I met friends in NYC and went to the NY Botanical Garden in April for their orchid show. Then I went to Phoenix on a speaking trip and got to see the desert landscape in their garden — totally different, but amazing as well. I went to Longwood many times, and also to Chanticleer, which can be done in a lunch time trip in spring/summer and is usually gorgeous.

There were some lowlights as well:

— Excruciating back and nerve pain. About a year ago I suffered a back incident (with corresponding nerve pain down my leg) that left me unable to walk for a week and then unable to do basic things like empty the dishwasher for a while. My life doesn’t stop, so this meant I took a family trip to Disney five weeks after that happened. That was…hard. Recovery has been fitful though I do feel significantly better now. I wish I knew why. I was doing all the “right” back exercises/physical therapy exercises before the episode, so it’s not like they prevented it.

— Some family travel. The 5-year-old has trouble getting to sleep at home and on the road it is even worse. So Disney (February) and Barbados (over Christmas) both featured some very late nights with a child throwing a tantrum. Not cool. Especially when you’re paying through the nose for the privilege! Bedtime battles in general are just tedious. I do know that “this too shall pass,” as my older kids don’t throw tantrums at 10 p.m., but this is a parenting stage I wish would go a little faster.

— Norovirus. Enough said.

— Child behavioral challenges. Will just have to vague-blog here.

— Not making it to Scotland. Longtime readers may recall our canceled flights, driving home from Newark at 3 a.m., etc. Good times. However, there is always the Bronx Zoo!

In other news: I had several longer Before Breakfast episodes run since I last posted links. On December 18 I welcomed Gretchen Rubin to the show, and she talked about habits, happiness, and more. On December 25 longtime listener Amanda shared her morning routines and her “pre-planning” rituals. On January 1st I did a solo longer episode in which I talked about time tracking — why and how to do it.

Please give them a listen!

Also, please consider signing up for my annual Time Tracking Challenge. From January 13-20 a great many of us will be tracking our time together. I’ll post my time logs on this blog. You can sign up here to get daily motivational emails from me.

Photo: Spain!

Known as “Oneika the Traveller,” she is an Emmy-award winning journalist, speaker, and TV host with a passion for travel. She also has a 5-year-old, and shares tips, best destinations, and what she has learned over the years of including her daughter in her adventures.

In the Q&A, a listener writes in asking for ideas to get through a long winter break sans childcare.

Please give the episode a listen! As always, we welcome ratings and reviews and ideas for future episodes. Also, please consider joining the BOBW Patreon community. This week we’ve been discussing present “rules and logistics” — which gifts does Santa bring, and are they wrapped? Which gifts come from relatives? Is this how you or your partner did it in your family of origin? We’ll also be gathering on Thursday for our annual goal-setting workshop (noon, eastern). Membership is $9/month.

It is…a lot of work. I’ve also been working hard on learning my Bach for the B-Minor mass. I’m happy to report that at rehearsal on Monday I knew my notes cold. I never got lost, even in those long runs of crazy 5 or 6 part harmony where I’m in the middle of everything (second soprano line). Now the goal is to mostly be able to look up and to really be able to listen to everyone else.

I am really enjoying the music, though. Hopefully the music will sound like magic, remembering the line that “all magic is just labor, hidden well.” I suppose that is true of the writing of this piece three centuries ago too!

In the meantime, I went to one band concert this week, and I have another kid band concert and choir concert to go to next week. Today I read at the preschool to celebrate the 4-year-old’s upcoming birthday. That happens over the holiday break, so we’re celebrating ahead of time. This weekend there is a choir concert and breakfast with Santa and an office holiday party. And hopefully a little downtime for puzzles.

In the meantime, some of this week’s content….Over at Vanderhacks (my Substack newsletter), I talked about “How to embrace the resolutions preseason” (that one’s behind the paywall). I also suggested that people “Find a micro-hobby” to celebrate their time confetti, and I wrote about how “Open space invites opportunity.” Please consider either a free or paid subscription!

Before Breakfast also had some holiday content, with a suggestion to “Give experiences,” and to “Remember to enjoy yourself.” (Worth noting this time of year!) I also interviewed the incredibly prolific romance and thriller novelist Sarina Bowen. She talked about how she gets ideas, keeps track of her ideas, and then executes on these ideas (to the tune of multiple bestselling books a year; her thriller The Five Year Lie recently hit #1 for thrillers on Audible). Please check that out too!

In the Q&A, a listener writes in asking about activities for teens and tweens — what are some things this age group will be excited to do with the family? This definitely gets challenging as the kids get older! (Though Starbucks probably features prominently…)

Please give the episode a listen! And please consider joining our Patreon community. Next week Thursday (12/19) we’ll be hosting our annual goal-setting workshop. Sarah will lead us in various exercises to figure out the upcoming year. Membership is $9/month (and you can quit at any point).

On some level, getting to shows in Madison Square Garden is quite easy. The arena is right above Penn Station/Moynihan Train Hall. I now know that we can be off a train and up by our seats in approximately 12 minutes, and that’s going through security and the ticket scanning! So probably I should consider more such shows in the future. We drove into Philly to get the train, but the Keystone train stops at Ardmore on the way to NYC, and Ardmore is 5 minutes from my house.

Of course, the problem is getting home. It was hanging over my head for most of the concert that we really needed to be on the 10:05 regional back to Philly, as the next train doesn’t go until close to 11:30. The 10:05 is bad enough, getting back to PHL at around 11:45, and then it’s a 20-minute drive home (no traffic). There’s no train back to Ardmore, so if we left our car there we’d have to Uber there to get it. We wound up leaving the show about 3 songs early due to my paranoia. We walked in the door at 12:10 a.m.

But! It was a good show. I enjoyed seeing what sounds the human voice can make and they sang their well-known pieces (Mary Did You Know? and Hallelujah, for instance). I am now feeling quite in the Christmas spirit, if tired after getting up to get kids out the door this morning. I am also realizing that I need to figure out my playbook for tomorrow, what ingredients we still need and what needs to go into the oven when. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

In today’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sarah and I share 7 strategies for lightening the “mental load,” defined as the cognitive and emotional effort it takes to manage life. From writing things down to batching, automation, embracing vertical ownership, encouraging kid independence, and spending out, we’ve got lots of ideas. And of course our favorite: care less. It’s not always possible, but when it is, it can definitely help!

In the Q&A we address a listener question about the best jobs that are high paying and also flexible. It’s not a question with a straightforward answer. Lots of jobs can be made more flexible once you’ve built up seniority and experience. Even “flexible” jobs usually aren’t 100 percent flexible once time has been spoken for. But we give some ideas for thinking through this question.

Please give the episode a listen, and as always we welcome ratings and reviews. Our Patreon community will be meeting next Tuesday (Nov 26th) to discuss all things holidays, so if you’re interested in that Zoom discussion, you can join us here. Membership is $9/month.

Back in September, I posted my 2024 Fall Fun List — a list of things I wanted to do to enjoy this fleeting season. Here’s an update on how I did.

Visit New England twice. I did! I went to a work-related gathering in Portland, Maine in early fall, and had a lovely run along the water and saw the northern lights. Then in mid/late October my husband and I went to Mount Desert Island in Maine. We stayed in Bar Harbor, hiked through Acadia, ate lobster, and ran the Run MDI half marathon. Lots of beautiful fall scenery there too.

Run long. I finished the half marathon, though it was fairly painful. I have not been motivated to run long since then! But I did do several longer runs during my training on a local nature trail, and those were quite nice.

Bike. I did bike solo a few times on a trail near here. We did not go as a family, despite buying another big kid bike (it has yet to be used). However I have been biking around the driveway with my 4-year-old! BOBW listeners have heard my ad about the Guardian Bike, and he has definitely figured it out. He asked if he could ride his own bike during a family bike ride — we shall see, as the trails are a little scary sometimes, but he could absolutely go on the Tag-along behind me. Of course, now it’s going to be cold for the next four months but…eventually.

Hike. My husband and I did the Gorham Mountain trail in Acadia, so I think this counts. My friend Joy and I have walked on local trails several times too.

Visit a botanical garden. I did do a lunch time picnic at Stoneleigh, and I went to Chanticleer several times, usually on Friday mid-day. When I created my “realistic ideal week” at BLP Live, I tentatively put in that Friday around lunch could be my “little adventure” time for doing things like this. There should be upsides to self employment!

Go apple picking. Wow, this seems like ages ago, though it was just mid/late September. We bought 3 pecks of honeycrisp apples at a local place. There was a lot of whining as it was a hot day, but we did it. And we ate through all our apples. I think we’ll go somewhere less crowded next year.

Watch a football game. Just snippets here and there on TV. I have family members going to a real one over Thanksgiving, but not me. Oh well.

Take family photos. We did, in a studio in late September. I now have the proofs and they are lovely (well, mostly – I don’t like viewing myself from some angles!). I’m not allowed to show random family photos anymore with older kids, but I’m happy to have these.

Enjoy BLP Live. I did! I love the beach and it was a great gathering. This will probably become a late fall tradition.

Listen to Vivaldi’s “Autumn.” Yep, and wrote several autumn-themed sonnets. I am thinking I might actually continue my 2-lines-a-day sonnet writing habit for another year. It’s pretty easy to do, and the discipline of writing sonnets weekly means occasionally I write one I like.

I’m now working on my holiday fun list, so stay tuned for that! If you made a fall fun list, how did you do?