@rafa Early mornings and evenings are what weve always relied on, as well. No two weeks are the same. Lots of tagging each other in and out!

Protip: As the kids get older, they stay up later, so that becomes difficult. Teaching them to be self-sufficient at bedtime is something I wish we had started earlier!

@rafa Mine is pretty similar 🤷‍♂️ (prior to newest baby)

The morning and evenings are my deep work time but sometimes I’ll shorten those and then do light work (emails and whatnot) during the day (naps or playtime)

But then my parents also come one day a week and then I like 20x productivity that day 🙂

@rafa Living in socialist utopia Scandinavia. We have daycare, kindergarten, school for all three. Neither my wife nor I have a regular jobby job.

There's no good way. Parental leave helps when they are the smallest. Your time is just severely limited now so make the best out of the hours that you have and try not to be bummed out too much in the hours where work is on your mind but the kid is in your hands.

That's what has helped me the most. To be ok with working less.

@rafa London based here. Our little one is starting state-funded nursery in January. It’s from 9 until 15:30 mon/fri and with extra money you can do 8:30 to 17:30 (which we’re going to for certain days.)
Until now we were with Bright horizons (a us chain) where we did 3 morning and 1 full day + extra half day sessions as needed (they are very flexible)

The catch with state nursery is that is bound to term times so you got to cover for mid-terms week off and in-between term and summer weeeks

@rafa our schedule is similar if the tasks require deep work — usually from 8–11 AM.

I will spend the rest of the day with my sons so my wife can work too. Fortunately, she is also working full-time from home.

Then I continue again from 8–12 PM where my timezone will overlap with my coworkers. This is when my wife will take over and accompany the kids.

@rafa Our kids (4 & 1) both go to school/day care 5 days a week, I work from 6:30am-5pm with sporadic step-aways to do chores/care for the kids (like bring them to school).

Unfortunately with both parents working full time, it's very hard to do anything less than 5 days of daycare, imo. Wife was in a crunch last month and even with daycare she was working every night once the kids were asleep.

@rafa
We were able to find a college student to come in to our home and watch the kids.

This meant rearranging the schedule every semester based on her courses ... but it helped.

We then didn't do daycare, so used that $ to pay her.

And when the kids started school, she was normally able to do pick up.

@rafa Did daycare part time thinking it would save some money. It definitely didn't. It was only $100-200 more per month. Well worth it to have reliable childcare during working hours.

Your situation sounds ideal given your constraints. Maybe nanny share or round robin child care with friends or neighbors in similar situation?

@rafa

My son schedule in kindergarden now is 9:30 to 15;30. So I work only in that time. All meetings and focused work on Thursday.

But before kindergarden my schedule is same as yours. Early morning and late evening is our friends.

@rafa Our solution was not to work full-time. We currently both work 4-day weeks, and my daughter goes to daycare 3 days a week. She's with one of us for the other 2 weekdays. We get quality time with her, but a) you have to find a job that will let you do 32 hours (not too uncommon in the Netherlands, luckily), and b) be able to afford the pay cut.

Quality of life is also greatly improved by working from home and living very close (5 min walk) to daycare.

@rafa The past two years have been absolute chaos for us: FT daycare is simply not available (not enough people wanting to work in the field I suppose) but it'd be around $1.2k and we're not even living in the Bay Area anymore.

My wife ended up leaving her job and we're still struggling. It really is all improvised on a daily basis depending on mood of the kid, our energy levels, and possible sickness.