Currently, I am managing the morning routine for the three kids and Chewy, my humongous bernadoodle. The goal is to get the newborn away from my wife for a period of time while getting the other two ready for daycare. Afterwards, I need to make sure Chewy gets to go potty, fill his food bowl, and make sure he has plenty of water (he loves to gulp down gallons of water in the morning!). Once all of that is done, it’s time to figure out breakfast for the kids (while being with the baby) and get their backpacks packed (with full water bottles). This dance starts anywhere between 7:30-8:30 and ideally I can get the older two kids to daycare by 9:30. Oh, and also make sure the newborn is quiet enough and hopefully napping right outside the room where my wife is sleeping before I leave to drop off. As anyone can imagine, this changes dramatically day to day, both in terms of length and complexity!

I found myself worrying about how I’m going to get all of this done when I go back to work and whether I will be able to help my wife in this daily dance enough to where she is not stressed out during the whole process. Another curveball is that my daughter is starting kindergarten towards the end of August, so we will have two separate drop offs to accommodate. Also, kindergarten as a dedicated start time that is much earlier than the flexible daycare drop off time, so we will need to dramatically shift our schedules to figure it all out.

I like to at least have a line of sight into how it will all work out and to see how to get the routine to be more compact/predictable every morning. What I realize is that it’s not going to be possible because so many things are unpredictable. I know many families have gone through or are going through this, and I also know things will eventually work out. I just need to remind myself of this fact when my mind starts to wander and to live in the present, where I embrace the unique chaos of each morning.