I had to change my work schedule a bit this week so that I could stay home yesterday.  To do so, I am working 4 ten hour days this week.

I am very grateful to the client I am working at for letting me work this schedule because we would have had to do some alternate babysitter magic or use a ”sick day” to have any chance of getting through this week otherwise.

It was also very nice to be home yesterday, which just happened to be the kids’ birthday and a day our family was supposed to visit Pookie’s classroom.  Those were a couple of nice coincidences.

But, I am very glad that it looks like I will not have to be staying with this schedule long term.

At this assignment, I work from 6 - 2:30 on a normal week.  This week that becomes 6 - 4:30.  The commute home normally takes about an hour and stretches to an hour and fifteen minutes when I leave at 4:30.  So, I am getting home at 5:45pm and walking into the house at dinner time.

After dinner, we normally play for about a half hour before starting the nighttime bathroom routine, reading stories, and going to bed between 7 and 7:30.  That doesn’t leave a whole lot of playtime with the kids.

I personally prefer to have a few hours with the kids every night rather than one big block of time once a week.  I am also pretty fortunate that with most of my assignments I am able to get home by 4pm.

I’m not sure how people handle the normal 9-5 routine and then fight through traffic to get home to their kids.  I guess you learn to make breakfast pretty special or have your kids stay up later at night.

Any tips for improving the quality time on night’s where work forces you away from the house more than usual?