The first year of having 2 kids? I didnt. We ate a lot of takeout or frozen meals. The older kid ate a lot of PBJ and easy Mac. He’s still alive and doing well.

After the horror show of year one with 2 kids, it got easier. We are usually home by 5:45 i try and have a few easy meals for the kids - pancakes, Mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, pizza, grilled cheese, etc (all with fresh fruit) that i can make quickly so they wont fill up on snacks instead. If i can, i do a family meal of pasta and meatballs, tacos, quesadillas, and such that are quick enough and kids and adults will eat. I also get a few hello fresh or blue apron that are on the shorter side but more interesting for me and DH and cook those once the kids are settled.

My husband gets home a little before 6 and I pick up the kids and get home around 6. I cook all of the food over the weekend and make things that we can get multiple meals out (pork roasts, chickens, lasagna). My husband starts to reheat things and maybe cook some fresh veggies when he gets home so we can eat sometime between 6 and 7. We all eat the same thing and during the week we never eat things that have complicated parts (ie tacos) or require a lot of clean up. I cook way more basic than I did prekids but it is healthy and you have to do whatever you can to get by....

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We make a lot of "base dishes" in batch on the weekend and augment with other things throughout the week. Some examples:

plain penne pasta, which can be dressed up with different jarred sauces, steamed veggies (I almost exclusively buy frozen if I plan on steaming them), frozen chicken sausage from Trader Joe's, etc.

white rice, similarly dressed up with egg and avocado, steamed veggies, canned beans, fresh salmon filet (cooks up really quickly), etc

We also admittedly do a lot of very casual pb&j, bowls of oatmeal, egg omelets, etc for my kids.

DH and I are pretty easy about dinner for ourselves, if we're not eating all together as a family. He and I are almost always happy with a baguette and olive oil and tomatoes, or easy sandwiches, cereal, etc. I grew up with regular big home cooked family dinners but I had a SAHM.

Oh, and another go-to of ours is frozen meals we've made over the weekend. Lasagna, meat loaf loaded with vegetables, etc. If DH or I don't cook at all over the weekend we're much more likely to be winging it through the week. We also order in (for ourselves) about 2x/week but try not to give our young kids ordered in food. Though sometimes we'll all have pizza.

Do you boil the pasta in advance and reheat it? HOw do you store it? I think pasta would be a pretty good, quick, dinner option, except it takes so darn long to get the water boiling.

NP here. When my kids were in preschool and seemed to only eat pasta, I’d boil a box of it on Sunday and keep the leftovers in the fridge. That way, kid meals could be made in a minute or two. It worked for adults, too. If I had time or inclination to sauté vegetables, I could do that and add it to precooked pasta.

Our kid is older now and can wait while I make dinner for the family most nights. But during toddler years it was difficult and we were lucky that nanny made lunch & dinner for kid and DH and me got takeout or DH got home early enough and managed kid while I cooked dinner.

My kids are 3.5 and 1 right now. We too get back at 6:30 and sometimes even later. There is absolutely no tome to cook. We have been eating leftovers and take out. We try to get a rotisserie chicken on Sunday so that we can eat at least twice. We also do pizza, meatball pasta. We clearly don’t eat well... but within limited tome and a tight budget, that’s the best we can do.

Anonymous wrote:Just back at work after mat leave with baby #2. When we just had one kid and could divide and conquer getting dinner on the table was not as challenging but now that we have two who need to be put to bed at roughly the same time I just can’t figure out how to make it work. Sometimes I used to prep dinner in the morning but I don’t have time to do that since DH leaves for work pretty early and I am alone with two kids.

DH and I get home from work around 6:30pm and bedtime routine for the baby starts at 7pm, then bedtime for older kid starts at 7:30pm. So best case I can start cooking at 8pm but honestly I am too exhausted and don’t love eating so late.

What do others do?

Frankly, I'm not even sure how we are fed in my house. The baby is fed and that's the most important thing. Husband apparently gets something for himself because he's still around. I'm not even sure what I eat but I'm fat, so I must be eating. It's all a fricking blur during the week. I work so much. My caretaker does most of the feeding of the baby.

This isn't going to help you, but our kids didn't go to bed this early. When we'd get home, one parent would play with the kids, the other parent would cook, we'd eat together, then start bedtime routines.

The good news is, pretty soon your kids will start going to bed a little later, you can have one combined bedtime routine instead of two separate ones, and things will get a little less crazy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We make a lot of "base dishes" in batch on the weekend and augment with other things throughout the week. Some examples:

plain penne pasta, which can be dressed up with different jarred sauces, steamed veggies (I almost exclusively buy frozen if I plan on steaming them), frozen chicken sausage from Trader Joe's, etc.

white rice, similarly dressed up with egg and avocado, steamed veggies, canned beans, fresh salmon filet (cooks up really quickly), etc

We also admittedly do a lot of very casual pb&j, bowls of oatmeal, egg omelets, etc for my kids.

DH and I are pretty easy about dinner for ourselves, if we're not eating all together as a family. He and I are almost always happy with a baguette and olive oil and tomatoes, or easy sandwiches, cereal, etc. I grew up with regular big home cooked family dinners but I had a SAHM.

Oh, and another go-to of ours is frozen meals we've made over the weekend. Lasagna, meat loaf loaded with vegetables, etc. If DH or I don't cook at all over the weekend we're much more likely to be winging it through the week. We also order in (for ourselves) about 2x/week but try not to give our young kids ordered in food. Though sometimes we'll all have pizza.

Do you boil the pasta in advance and reheat it? HOw do you store it? I think pasta would be a pretty good, quick, dinner option, except it takes so darn long to get the water boiling.

we have three kids. I work late often not home til 630 and DH is only an extremely basic cook. I've worked on him for years but have to accept he can only reheat and do simple things--spaghetti and meatballs, burgers, etc.--and we just incorporate those in.

I cook after kids go to bed and sometimes while I'm catching up on work emails--usually between 9:30 and 10:30 pm at night. And always cook ahead on weekends. Make an instant pot meal that DH or sitter can reheat the next day. Also do the same cooking on the weekends. I sometimes as DH to do prep then too. Mince an onion, cut up peppers for fajitas next day, etc. Just having that 10 minutes done the night before can make it possible to get dinner on the table in 15 minutes the next night. I NEVER cook anything that is just one meal's worth of food. I roast two chickens at a time or a pork shoulder roast. We eat it first night and second night then I mince up a lot of the meat and freeze for later chili or fajitas or soup.

And keep frozen foods! I always have some frozen pizzas and waffles on hand. And a favorite like frozen curly fries or tater tots that can make the meal seem fun for kids and are easy to pop into the toaster oven while you're getting other things done. There is nothing wrong with breakfast for dinner sometimes. Or just sandwiches and salad picked from the backyard.

good luck OP! Hang in there!

we do home chef 2-3 times a week, order food once, and heat up trader joe’s frozen pasta/fish etc the rest of the time

Generally, I don’t. My working husband cooks dinner.

So with a complete caveat that we only have one and will soon have two which I know will be wayyyy harder, there are a couple of go-tos we have that make dinner way easier. (And lots of good tips on here that I am filing away now that I know our schedule is about to become crazy again). Normally we do either a frozen pizza once a week or go out to eat, but that's challenging as I have gestational diabetes. Like many others we tend to cook a bit meal on Sunday that lasts for 3 dinners. Then we tend to cook twice more during the week (each meal lasts 2 nights), usually something very easy that one of us makes the night before once DS is in bed. It helps that we both cook.

We love the ease of chicken thighs made in the oven. Cheap, delicious, hard to mess up. We follow the time/some seasoning recommendations here and they are very good: https://thesaltymarshmallow.com/crispy-baked-chicken-thighs/

Another we do are just quick fry pork chops or lamb shoulder chops. Little bit of seasoning, throw them in a pan, boom done in 15 minutes.

For sides, we usually steam some vegetables or do a salad kit in a bag.

It certainly helps that one of us needs to be home by 5:30 to relieve our nanny, we've staggered our schedules in order to do so and luckily it hasn't been an issue. Whoever is home starts heating up dinner to get it on the table.

We used to fight and stress over cooking. Finally we threw in the towel and hired a nanny who also cooks. Has been great for my relationship and for everyone’s health. I don’t know if it’s possible for your family to throw some money at the problem for a few years via a meal service or something but i recommend considering it.

Anonymous wrote:It's true that both parents coming home at 6.30pm is very late; that's barely any family time and it's stressful for the kids to be rushed to bed like that. (Signed, a FT mom who gets home at 5.30, who had to lean out with shorter hours so DH could lean in, sigh, I can't help it.)

That's my family. We get home at 6:30 together. Kids are 3 years old and 11 months.

Mostly evening prep for me, after kids go to bed. I do a lot of instant pot or slow cooker. I try to make big quantities and watch it last a few days, including:
Schnitzel
Soup
Meatballs.