Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Staying Sane at Home -- Time Sharing

Since the beginning of the year, Dave and I have found ourselves in a very unfamiliar place -- our home. We haven't had any gigs and strangely did not decide to do any traveling outside my jaunt to St. Louis (St. Louis rocks!).

Which leaves us home, at our house, alot. And we kind of don't know what to do with ourselves.

Now, I was home a bunch after Willow was born, but most of the time I was home alone. With two kids. (cue hands to face and McCulkin-esque ahhhh!) I kind of figured out how to rock that and then I went slightly crazy and then I went back to work.

But both of us at home for any amount of time is just foreign. It's taken us a while to figure out how to work it.

We already had a protocol for days when Lisel goes to daycare -- we do the childcare split, a concept first introduced to me by fellow artist couple Katy O'connor and Randy Cole. They both have open schedules and a child and they figured out long before we did that if one parent takes the wee one in the morning and the other takes him in the afternoon then everyone gets time to get both their kid time and their creative groove on. So when there's just Willo, that's what we do.

But when Lisel was home, and we had two kiddos to care for, our first instinct was to to spend every waking hour together as a family. Which is fun until 3 days have passed and neither parent has had a minute of alone time.

Things would get a little stressed up in Sanger McQueenville.

And so I had the bright idea to maybe to a shorter version of the time split on days when we're all together. Each parent gets two hours of free time per day. And it really seems to make a difference. I mean, we love our girls to the ends of the ever expanding universe and back, but we also both have or own needs, our own thoughts to think and music to make. Touching our toe in that water on a daily basis makes us better parents.

What about you? What are your tactics for keeping track of yourself amongst the child rearing?


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