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[quote=Anonymous]OP, my spouse works long and unpredictable hours, including overnights, weekends and most holidays.  DH cannot do any drop offs or pick ups due to the nature of his job, so mornings are all on me, and after school as well.  We have no local family, no nanny and no babysitter.  Here's what we do to make things manageable:

-On overnights or weekends when he's working, I make things easy. Super easy meals, and plenty of TV/movies so I can get things done around the house.

-We do lots of kids classes on the weekends to give our weekends structure, since often that's the only thing we have scheduled.  So we have two kids' classes on Saturday (swimming and gymnastics) and two kids classes on Sunday (soccer and tennis).  This gets us out of the house and socializing with others (important for me too).  Since we have no local family, we don't have Grandma's Sunday dinner to look forward to or going to the Grandparents' house.  The classes give us a structure for our weekend and something to do if we have nothing else going on.

-I made friends with other Moms whose husbands also work late hours/weekends or who travel often for work, and we get together with the kids on the weekends

-I also made friends with other Moms who have no local family--they are more available on weekends, and we get together on holidays too since they often are alone on holidays

-We celebrate holidays on another day if DH has to work the holiday.  So if DH works Thanksgiving, we celebrate the day after instead.

-Although it's tough when DH works nights and weekends, he also gets random days off during the month (like a random Wednesday).  So he'll go to the kids school school events, get to participate in parent/teacher conferences, get to do pick up/drop off during the week, and we'll often go out for lunch as well, so we have time to nurture our marriage.

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