I Don’t Know How She Did Back-to-School Week and a Ninety-Minute Commute

This Month’s Artist Caregiver:

I am a white cis woman in her mid-thirties living in suburban New England. At the time of this diary, I worked full-time in a communications role for a theatre service organization and part-time for a new work development organization. My full-time job was hybrid, and I was in the office in a city about fifty miles away two days a week. I have two kids, B (4) and baby J (1), and live with my husband. He works part-time in a remote role for an educational institution and cares for J during the day.

Village: B is in half-day preschool Monday-Friday. My parents live within driving distance, about seventy-five minutes away. My dad, who is retired, typically picks B up on Fridays at 11:45 a.m. so we don’t have to pay for after-school care, which we do Monday-Thursday. My mom often comes up once or twice a month as well to help with one or both of the kids, but she travels a lot for work so it’s more sporadic. Currently, they are pretty much the entirety of our caregiving village.

Financial Impact: B’s tuition, after-school care, and summer camp fees are around 15-20 percent of our total income. We consistently pull from our savings to cover them. We absolutely love his school, though—it’s not the cheapest in our area, but the quality of the teachers and administrators, the location (a twelve-minute drive away), and the community make it worth it. I joined the board this year because I love it so much!

My husband’s job luckily pays a solid hourly rate and doesn’t ask very much of him, which allows him to work and care for J during the day. It is not very interesting, though, and doesn’t have anything to do with what he went to school for or what he’s passionate about. He does freelance creative work where her can fit it in as well. He’s been looking for more stimulating, values-aligned work for a while now, but it’s hard. A new position would have to compensate him at a level that matches his current income plus the cost of full-time childcare for J in order for it to be feasible for our family.

I love these family days, but I am generally just as worn out at the end of them as I am from a normal workday.

Diary

Monday

It’s Labor Day, so neither my husband nor I have to work! Still, we’re all up by 7:00 a.m. I dump some lentils and tomatoes in the crockpot. Then, we drive to our friends’ house an hour away in the city where my husband and I met. J naps in the car. With two other couples—who have two kids each—we have a fun time watching the Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour movie. It’s chaotic, with kids constantly running from the mud kitchen on the deck to the crayons on the table in the living room, where they dance along with Taylor. At one point B wants a snack, but I tell him he has to wait until the end of “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” leading him to whine that “this song is toooooo long!!”

We drive home in the midafternoon during J’s second nap. B gets to watch some Rubble and Crew when we get home as the adults do yardwork and housework and J toddles around after us. After B’s allotted video time, I take the kids down the block to play outside with our neighbors. We live on a very, very quiet street and are lucky to have two families with young kids nearby, so from spring through early fall, there’s usually a pack of children riding scooters in the street and chasing each other in and out of yards. I absolutely love it. We return home at 6:00, eat the delicious lentil stew, and start the long to-do list of bedtime. Both boys are settled by 8:00, and my husband and I watch an episode of Seinfeld and then head to bed ourselves. I love these family days, but I am generally just as worn out at the end of them as I am from a normal workday.

Tuesday

Tuesdays are one of my in-office days (standard for my team is Tuesday and Thursday), so I wake up around 6:15. I get myself ready, make peanut butter toast for J and a frozen waffle for B, and leave the house at 7:30. J is in a very clingy phase and cries when I leave. I hate to see that sad little face pressed to the glass door as I pull out of the driveway. My commute involves about a half-hour drive to a commuter rail station, about seventy minutes on the train, and a quick walk to my office. I send emails the whole train ride and get to my desk around 9:30, where I immediately hop into a Zoom check-in with colleagues in New York City and France. At midday I table in a theatre lobby, talking about our organization and handing out candy to incoming theatre-curious college students. I duck out at 3:00 to catch a train home, once again sending emails through the ride.

I walk in the door at 4:30. B didn’t have school today, so my mom took him for adventures outside while my husband worked and took care of J. She left when he finished up work around 2:30, so he has been on B duty since then. Now, we get everyone in the car in time to be at B’s school at 5:00. They’re doing an open house since tomorrow is the first day of school. B is in the same classroom with the same teachers as last year, so he’s psyched to be back. Seeing J toddle around the classroom is wild—this day last year he was about four weeks old, strapped in a carrier on my chest. What a difference a year makes! After dragging the kids away from the school—neither wants to leave—we make it home for dinner, bedtime, another episode of Seinfeld, and bed.

Wednesday

Today is a work from home day and B's first "phase-in" day, which means he's in school for the wildly-inconvenient hours of 9:45-11:45. B and I wake up around 6:45 (well, he’s been up for a while, but his okay-to-wake clock signals that he’s allowed out of his room at 6:45), and the baby sleeps in until 7:10 (my husband is an early riser—he’s already been up for a while and has a pot of coffee ready for me). 7:30 to 9:30 is a blur of showering, prepping breakfast, getting the kids dressed, sending emails, and readying the house for the cleaners. We started having our house professionally cleaned once a month near the end of my pregnancy with J, and it has been a real lifesaver. I’m just not sure the floors would ever be truly mopped without them.

My husband needs to stay near his computer for his work, so I drive B to school at 9:30, come home for two meetings, and then turn right back around—Zooming into the second half of a team check-in meeting from the car—for pick-up at 11:30. After a stop at Dunkin’ for celebratory munchkins, B gets settled in front of the TV for much more Wild Kratts than usual while the baby naps. J is just taking one long midday nap today, since he slept in! We’re in the experiment phase with the one-to-two nap transition. It was brutal with B, but I’m optimistic that my more chill, go-with-the-flow attitude as a second-time mom will make it better for J. My husband works until 3:00, and I have more meetings until 5:00. At 5:00, I take the kids down the street to play with our neighbors while my husband has a Zoom meeting for a volunteer board he's on and makes dinner (Trader Joe's vegetarian bulgogi with veggies and rice). After bedtime, I send some more work emails and make a routine chart for B in Canva while my husband and I chat.

Thursday

It’s another phase-in day at B’s school. I’d normally go to the office on a Thursday, but today I work from home so I can do pick-up and drop-off. I’m grateful for the flexibility my team offers—my boss has two young children as well, so she gets it. This morning both boys and I are up at 6:45 a.m., and the big project of the morning is making a castle out of a cardboard box while my husband goes for a run. I drive B to school, but this time there are tears at drop-off, so I linger more than I should. It’s always so hard to leave an upset kid, even when I know he’s in excellent hands. I drive home questioning everything and am late for my 10:00 a.m. meeting. It’s my favorite of the week, where our whole team gathers to discuss upcoming digital content. The meeting goes right until 11:30, when I hop back in the car. I’m relieved to pick up a happier kid than I left, though his teacher does say that he cried for a long time and suggests that he might want to bring a stuffie or other item from home tomorrow for comfort.

The afternoon is largely the same as yesterday—J is back to two naps today, B gets some quality screen time while my husband finishes his work, and I have emails to write and meetings to attend. One of them brings me in contact with a dear friend, which is always a plus! We’re collaborating on a project for work that I’m very excited about. As usual, I sign off at 5:00 and take the boys down the street to play. After bedtime, my husband preps for a freelance project while I run to CVS for SkinnyPop (my addiction) and to print a family photo B needs to bring to school for his classroom. As soon as I get home, I realize I forgot to get whole milk for the baby, so I head back out. Errands finally complete, I decide I’m too tired to spend time on my own freelance work for the new play development organization like I had hoped to, and I collapse into bed.

This is my first tiny taste of the “sandwich generation” of taking care of kids and parents, and I am not ready!

Friday

I wake up with J at 6:40, grateful that it’s Friday and—blessedly—the last phase-in day! I send my first email of the day at 7:30 a.m., parent in the morning while my husband works early, do drop-off (with a stuffed friend in his bag as back-up—no tears today!), stop at the post office, and come home. Around 11:00 I get a text from my dad that he's arrived to pick B up from school, but he forgot to put the car seat in his car. I drive back to the school to install our car seat in his car so they can go to the library. After heading home for some lunch, more emails, and to kiss the baby and my husband, I drive to the train station. I park, take two Zoom meetings from a nearby coffee shop, and then hop on the train into the city for dinner with a friend from college who is in town for work. She lives in Los Angeles and is one of my best friends in the world, so though it makes for a bit of a wild day, I’m thrilled to get some time with her. We both love seafood, so we split salad, crab claws, and a lobster roll at one of my favorite restaurants. I don’t love missing dinner and bedtime with my kids, of course, but I relish non-working adult time, too. Most of my best friends live far away from me, so I don’t get these moments as often as I wish I did!

On the train home later, exhausted but happy, I receive a call from my dad—his ice hockey teammate is driving him to the emergency room because he fell on the ice! Despite of his helmet, his short-term memory is shot, and they’re worried about a concussion. My mom is asleep, my middle brother and his wife are away for a wedding, and my youngest brother is at college in Pennsylvania, so I’m the only one able to meet him at the hospital so he’s not alone. I’m gearing up to drive straight there from the train station, but luckily my brother keeps calling our mom and manages to wake her up right as my train is pulling in. She goes and tells me not to. This is my first tiny taste of the “sandwich generation” of taking care of kids and parents, and I am not ready!

Saturday

Though exhausted from a late night, I wake up at 6:30 with the baby. At 9:00, my husband takes B to swim lessons and to pick up our community supported agriculture (CSA) box. I go back to bed (instead of logging into my email for my freelance work) while J takes his first nap of the day around 9:30. We facetime my parents in the middle of the day—they got home from the hospital in the early hours of the morning, and though my dad officially has a concussion, he’s doing okay. He's shaken, though. He vows to take a perhaps indefinite ice hockey break. In the afternoon, I take B to a birthday party—he passes out in the car there, wiped out from a very exciting week—while my husband stays home with J. We’re all tired by dinnertime.

Sunday

Since we’ve been in opposite directions all week, we decide to really prioritize family time today. We all go to the children’s museum between J’s two naps and have a nice time, then watch a movie with B during J’s second nap. In the late afternoon, we Zoom with my husband’s parents, have a simple dinner, and head to sleep. I drift off thinking about how the next day finally marks the start of getting back into a real routine, with full days of school and after-school care for B. In spite of my best efforts, I’m behind on a lot of things for work after being so all over the place all week—and I’ve really neglected my freelance work, not touching it at all this week. Oh, well. Things will get better now that we’re back in our normal flow…right?

We rely on my parents so much to help us out, and having them so actively involved with my kids is such a joy to me. The reminder that it won’t always be this way is really tough.  

Reflections

Spotlight on artistry: Honestly, just keeping this diary—forcing myself to write something other than emails and social media captions—was a win this week. I am endlessly grateful that I have the kind of job where I have the freedom and flexibility to control my own time during the workday. I have deliverables I am responsible for and teammates I need to be available to during the day, but no one is tracking my keystrokes or anything like that. If I had a different kind of job, I likely would have needed to take a lot more time off this week (but maybe I should have anyways—that’s a lesson for next year’s phase-in week).

A note from January 2026: My organization is now fully remote, and I look forward to seeing how removing commuting from my routine impacts the shape of my weeks.

Spotlight on caregiving: Honestly, even though I didn’t actually have to do anything to support my dad with his health scare, I was really shaken by it. We rely on my parents so much to help us out, and having them so actively involved with my kids is such a joy to me. The reminder that it won’t always be this way is really tough. 

Spotlight on support systems and resources: I might be dragged in certain corners of the internet for this, but shout out to sleep training. B falls asleep on his own every night and stays in his room until the bird sounds come on his Hatch, and though J doesn’t always sleep all the way through the night for a week straight like he did this week, he often does. The book Precious Little Sleep is my sleep bible. I’m not exaggerating when I say I truly don’t know if I could maintain the level of executive functioning needed to do my job and keep my life together on less sleep than I get. I just love sleep!

A note from the co-caregiver: Husband here! We are so lucky, not only for our village (I include our forgiving jobs here), but also that not every week is like this one. I also work a second freelance job and was prepping for a project there this week. It strikes me that there’s rarely a moment that any of us are doing fewer than two things at a time: working and childcare, meetings while driving, working and caring for our own parents. Two Seinfelds and a Sunday afternoon movie equals a little more than two hours of time in a week when some (never all!) of us can connect restfully as a family. Reading through and reliving this week, I’m reminded of two parts of this family life that constantly strike me simultaneously: this is as hard as it is wonderful, and we are so incredibly fortunate for the support we have.