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[quote=Anonymous]My days aren’t so long (thank goodness — I don’t know how to do it, OP!) but I’m definitely tired when my kids are home in the evenings.  I prioritize wearing them out tbh.  My older kid’s elementary school is across the street with aftercare that runs to 6, but I pick her up at 4 and have her walk with me the 1.5 mile round trip to collect her brother from daycare and he walks at least partway home.  We’re usually home by 5:30 and I do something easy for most weeknight dinners.  Since I work from home I can do some meal prep during my lunch break but I don’t always have time.  Here are some things we’ve had in the last week:

- peanut butter and jam sandwiches with carrots
- couscous cooked in beef broth with brown lentils and frozen peas (cook the lentils and couscous separately then mix together and toss in the peas and stir for a few minutes until peas are heated and the whole dish is a comfortable temperature to eat)
- golden curry with chickpeas, zucchini, and spinach on rice (sometimes convenience food are where it’s at)
- bacon and eggs scrambled with frozen corn and spinach on toast
- pasta with avocado, cherry tomatoes, and Parmesan (cook pasta, slice avocados, dump on pasta and stir)

I am very behind on it this week so this is all pretty slapdash but I also do a lot of preparing stews and soups on the weekend and freezing them.  In general I make enough for 4+ meals, where we have the dish one night, then for leftovers a few nights later and the rest gets frozen.

While I’m prepping dinner and while I’m cleaning up after I encourage my kids to run around playing indoor tag or similar.  Thinking of starting an after dinner walk around the block as part of the evening routine now that my little one is staying up a bit later.  We do bath-books-bed starting at 7 and the kids are asleep between 8 and 9 (depending on if they napped and how successful in was at the exhausting them part of the evening).

I can’t imagine priorizing education in the evenings; that’s what the day is for.  Evenings are for play, books, (doom scrolling but I’m trying to get better about this), and home chores.  I find it helps me to prioritize non energetic chores that I can do while watching the kids play to stop me from just staring exhaustedly at my phone — if in tell myself l I’m going to sew a patch on my kid’s trousers or sort laundry I am likely to actually do that whereas there’s no way I’m going clean the bathroom at night.[/quote]

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