back to work - evening routine?

[littlestrawby]

Hi all, I am due to go back to work start of Jan and am trying to think how our evenings will go on the days that I've been at work.

At a settling in session at nursery yesterday, the manager mentioned that the afternoon dinner is more of a sandwich picnic as they find most families like to go home and have a sit down meal with their baby as a family.

My question is...how?!! At absolute best I'll get home from work shortly after 6.30, and at that time DH will have just got back from picking up DD (12mo) from nursery. How do we find the time to make/eat dinner together (we wont even be hungry until later...), have a bit of down time with DD, have bath time, have DD asleep by 7.30? I imagine she'll be exhausted and so I don't want to keep her up much later than that.

How do you all time things on the evenings when you've been at work during the day? Will a slow cooker become my friend?!

When my older children were in nursery I used to have food in the slow cooker ready to eat when we got home or I would get out a frozen meal in the morning(spaghetti Bol/curry/stew/cottage pie and microwave it when we got home, I always cooked large portions then froze the rest for this reason. Every Friday I called at the chip shop on the way home and had a chippy tea. Kids were always bathed and in bed by 7.30

OK Jmed first copy what you posted above. Then scroll down to the bottom of the thread and click on “start a new thread in this topic” (see pic for screenshot). Think of a title for your question, then paste the text into the “message” box and click “Post message”- voila, a new thread.

DH isn't normally at home when kids are in nursery and I'm at work, so I don't go mad but we do eat together. We normally have jacket potato, beans on toast, that kind of thing. We don't manage a bath every night

I don’t get why nurseries do this. It would be much better if they gave them a proper meal at 5ish. Our nursery closes at 5.45 and I get home and get the kids unpacked and inside by 6pm. DH doesn’t get home till 8 so there is no way I’m going to prepare a proper meal and try and get 3 knackered kids to sit and eat it before trying to get them bathed and into bed by 7! Sometimes I have to put my youngest to bed at 6.30 as he’s so tired. I just give them toast and or a banana and the youngest has a bottle of milk. They all seem fine with that.

Sitting down to eat as a family is lovely I’m sure, but perhaps with older children or on weekends.

One alternative to the suggestion here is flexible working arrangements (where you start very early in the morning and leave early, with DH doing drop-off or similar) so you can collect her from nursery at 4pm, put her in front of the tv or similar for an hour while you make dinner for 5.30pm.
But how we managed it when the kids were this age was to have a nanny do the nursery pick up and make a simple meal on the days DH and I were both out at work. We'd both arrive home from work at 5.30pm and all eat together. All in bed by 7pm.
Now they're older (youngest is 3) they can wait till 6pm for dinner and the youngest two are in bed for 7.30pm. So things change and get easier. Family dinner is important to us.

Could you spend your weekends meal prepping? And then maybe leave work a little early to make sure she eats at a good time and still gets to bed in time? Plus a bath, an educational story and time to talk about your day?

TOTALLY KIDDING

From one working mummy to another, who has been through the same, I just wanted to assure you that one way or another it'll settle down. Kids go through phases so what works one week might not even work the next.

When my daughter did the same, if there was dinner and she was hungry, she'd eat. If she wasn't hungry, she didn't. If she was hungry and I hadn't made dinner, she had toast, cheese, yogurt or whatever was quick and easy. Sometimes I was super mum and had something ready in the slow cooker. Mostly I probably dragged her round tescos even though she was exhausted and gave her a cheese string.

I know that probably wasn't very helpful but I went through the same and have been a full time working mum since my daughter was a year old so just wanted to send you positive thoughts and wish you lots of luck.

DS is 14 months. He has 3 meals plus snacks at nursery. The main hot meal is at lunch then it's soup and a sandwich at 4pm. I pick him up at 5 and he's in the bath at half 5. By 6pm he's had a bottle of milk and a story and is flat out asleep till 6am. We don't give him any extra food as he's too shattered to eat it.

We started trying to do this with DS (same age). Found it difficult trying to cook for all of us before he got tired, and he wasn't that bothered about eating anyway as he'd eaten well at nursery. Now we have more playtime with him after nursery and he's fine with a snack. Then one of us cooks and one does bath and bed. The four days he's not in nursery we eat a cooked meal together. Seems to be working OK so far.