Ah.
I also am The Keeper of The Schedule and all things medical.
I started putting appointments into the family calendar as a meeting and, if it was during the work day and my husband was in charge of taking the child to the wherever, inviting him to the meeting (at bbith his personal and his work email).
That way, he’d get a reminder in his outlook calendar 15 minutes prior.
Most weeks we do a quick schedule check on Sunday evenings. Pickups/dropoffs, any unusual meetings or commitments, carving out personal time. Usually both have things to share, add, or ask.
I did have to explicitly talk about the cognitive overhead of remembering all the things, even if he’s doing an equal share of physical labor. Luckily he’s pretty committed to being an equal partner and it only took one or two conversations to sink in.
For us, we found it’s better for one of us to be responsible for an entire area including planning, doing, and calendaring, and ask for one-off help if needed. This is how my husband became in charge of all things medical (appointments, vaccines, calendaring, etc.) for our kiddo, but, for example, I bought a better thermometer at his request.
I do have a tendency to accumulate little one-offs, so every few months when I feel like I’m drowning we have a reset chat and he’ll take on another area.
I hate to use work tools at home, but Trello has been good for literally seeing when the lists get too long. And sometimes everything falls apart, but we have a good history of being able to fix things if we identify the problem properly, so I’m usually not enraged for too long.
For schedule angst, I highly recommend two books:
“Fair Play” and “the family firm”
I do this, and try to also say “can you put that in your calendar and invite me?” To even the load.
In general we try to split tasks as much as possible. So spouse is completely responsible for the dentist. I honestly don’t know the dentist’s name. Spouse made the original appointment, took her, and put his contact info as the only one in their system (so mom doesn’t get called because of sexism). When they called a few weeks ago asking to reschedule, he delt with all of it. He did schedule the new appointment for the middle of Naptime, but…live and learn baby! I don’t think he’ll make that mistake again lol.
I try to put appointments in google calendar and invite and set alarms. Any reminders I do via text
Schedule wise, we have a large dry erase board in our kitchen. Each week I put the schedule up there. (I have a lot of other systems for long term scheduling too lol)
We have a once weekly lunch date where we talk logistics for the next week and check in to see how we’re doing in general (this was a recommendation in couples counseling).
I am the family project manager, but my husband will do more than 50% of the actual work. He is not good with things like appointments and keeping track of things (he sucks at this at work as well and has positioned himself into a role where he can be a subject matter expert and never have to project manage anything). I keep track of the long term calendar and then I’ll put into his calendar stuff for the upcoming week.
For example, I schedule medical appointments but my husband takes the time off work to take our son.
We find it tough to find time to talk about stuff otherwise. During the day we’re both at work, and in the evenings our toddler demands 100% of attention. By the time he goes to bed it’s after 9 pm and our brains are fried.
we have to check in every night about tomorrow’s happenings because our brains are a mess and our life is a mess these days.
usually i initiate and ask questions and then it becomes a good talk and he remembers things to add.
We have used an ungodly amount of screentime during sick days because we are so so brain dead
Please someone tell me how to avoid it or that it’s ok
It is okay. I’m even a leaning “crunchy mama” and try to minimize screen time, and I basically figure any amount is fair game when we’re sick. That being said, Latte still has many wiggles when sick. And does well with outside time. So things we’ve done, if you want or would benefit from the ideas-
Wrap up in blankets together and read a massive pile of books on the porch
Wagon walks. We have a big wagon, she bundles in blankets and flops over, I drag her around the neighborhood.
I wish someone could take ME on a wagon walk
SAME DUDE.
Thanks dude. This is super helpful and i needed to hear that.
My TV runs all the time when sick or not. My kids are gonna be geniuses who change the world. Pretty sure Meowlet will also be excellent, regardless tv time
I think the official CDC guidance is that after age 2, they are always fucking sick and make sure you manage their tv use such that there is at least one show that turns them into a convenient zombie.
Do you know what no tv did to my sick kid today? No? Because it was too much and I can’t handle it. Here is a picture of him with the cutlery baskets, some pics I sent SIL. And none of the one of him wielding a chef knifw
Oh and also we used TV today so we could both work for an hour, since today’s childcare evaporated and forgot he has a standing event of “look after the grandchildren”.
I love Kate Baer. Every poem is like right in the feels.
What the fuck are other kids apparently. For interrupting you see stuff like “acknowledge them and ask them to wait until you’re done” etc. do other children not then just scream NO NO NO or BE QUIET or LALALALALALA at you the entire time you try to complete your thought? Do they not follow you out of the room screaming NO MOMMMMMMMY the whole time? Cuz all the advice seems to assume the child just. Complies. That seems fake.
We had one day of success with having her raise her hand (then if she chose to scream at least she wasn’t 6” from my ear) and we praised her to high Heaven for that but apparently that got boring so now it’s a lot of yelling again. I’m out of ideas to make any progress.
We remind a few times that mommy/daddy/etc are talking and then ignore her. I know it’s hard and sometimes it makes actually taking impossible to hear, but we do it anyway and then when finished we turn to her and say “ok, I’m done talking and now it’s your turn. What were you trying to say?”
It took probably a few weeks of doing that for it to get better but now it definitely is better. She’s much more likely to stay quiet after we give her the reminder now
That’s what we do. It’s been at least two weeks.
