A Real Work-From-Home Day With My Girls
Some days look different than I expect before they even start.
I usually wake up with a loose plan in my head. What I need to get done, what can probably wait, and what I really hope I can finish before the day gets busy. I don’t get a long, quiet start most mornings anymore. Sometimes I’m up about an hour before the girls, and sometimes I wake up right alongside the littlest one and we’re both easing into the day at the same time.
I carry my coffee to my desk and sit down if I’m lucky to get a short quiet window first thing in the morning, and I’ve learned not to waste it. I try to use that time for the work that needs my full attention, because once the house wakes up, everything shifts.
Working from home with kids in the house is not balanced. It’s layered.
When the girls are moving around, the sound of the house changes. Someone is getting into something they shouldn’t. Someone can’t find the right toy they swear they just had. Someone suddenly needs help with something that absolutely cannot wait two minutes. I work in between those moments. Not in a perfectly organized way, but in the only way that really works here.
I answer emails while listening to a story being told from the other room. I pause what I’m doing when a small voice needs help right now. I keep one ear open for noises that are concerning for a mom.
I still get frustrated more than I want to admit.
Some days I handle the interruptions well. Other days I feel myself getting short and impatient, especially when I’m in the middle of something and my brain is already stretched thin. I really did picture working from home looking quieter and more controlled than it does most days. I imagined longer stretches of focus and a smoother rhythm. What it actually looks like is stopping and starting over and over again, and learning how to calm myself back down when I feel the irritation creeping in.
Some days I handle the interruptions well. Other days I feel myself getting short and impatient — and I have to calm myself back down.
By mid-morning, my office doesn’t feel like a work-only space anymore. There is usually something from real life sitting next to my laptop or scattered on the floor. A drawing. A princess tower. A stray cup that never made it back to the kitchen. It used to bother me. Now it mostly just feels like an honest picture of how our days really look.
Lunch is simple most days. Leftovers, something quick, or whatever can be made without too much effort. I do make it a priority to fully sit down at the table to eat, just for some intentional connection. Sometimes I answer a few messages towards the end. Sometimes I stay right there and listen to everything they want to tell me about their morning. That flexibility is one of the biggest gifts of working this way, not because it makes me more productive, but because it lets me stay close to the rhythm of our home.
The afternoon is always harder for me. The quiet focus is gone by then, the house is louder, and everyone is a little more tired, including me. I try to save lighter work for this part of the day, if possible. The kind of tasks that don’t completely fall apart if I have to stop in the middle.
One thing I’ve learned, especially during heavier work weeks, is to save a little PTO on purpose. Not for trips or long plans, but for the weeks when I can tell my girls are feeling how busy I’ve been. My oldest is in one of those weeks right now. I had a bigger project that took most of my attention, and I can see it showing up in her mood. I don’t think it’s okay for her to act out, and I don’t carry all of that on myself, but I do understand where it’s coming from. Sometimes what they really need is simply more of me. Having that small cushion of time gives me the freedom to step back for a day when the week gets heavy and their need for my attention feels louder than everything else.
Some days one of the girls is right up in my space while I’m working. My oldest will climb onto the back of my desk chair and start doing my hair like it’s a salon appointment I never asked for. My youngest usually wants to be held and will reach straight for my keyboard or whatever happens to be sitting on my desk that day. It definitely slows me down, and I won’t pretend it doesn’t test my patience sometimes. But it also feels like part of this season, learning how to work with small hands and big personalities woven into the middle of my day instead of trying to keep everything neatly separated.
Late afternoon blurs into evening pretty quickly around here. Snacks show up on the counter, toys have migrated further through the house, and I try to close my laptop a little more intentionally than I used to. I don’t try to squeeze in one more thing quite as often. There will always be more work waiting.
Dinner usually starts later than I plan, and it always has. We cook, we talk, and we clean up in a way that never feels completely finished. My five-year-old can’t sit still long enough to finish telling me whatever story she’s in the middle of, and I almost always forget someone’s drink when I set the table. It is all very ordinary.
By the time bedtime is over, the house finally settles. Most nights now, I don’t open my laptop again. I used to try to squeeze in one more thing while the house was quiet, but I’ve learned that staying up late always catches up with me the next day. I usually leave my work where it is and let the quiet be what it is instead. That calm at the end of the day belongs to me in a different way than the morning quiet does.
Working from home with kids in the house is not balanced. It is layered. Work layered into family life and family layered into work, built out of small starts and stops all day long. I do not get as much done in one straight line as I used to, but I get to live inside the day while it is happening, and right now, that feels like exactly where I am supposed to be.
