If you’ve ever tried to fit dinner, bath time, play, dishes, bonding, and bedtime into a tight evening window with a baby who has opinions—you know it’s a race against the clock.
Here’s how our weekday evenings go down with our 11-month-old:
🕟 4:30 PM – We pick her up from dayhome. She loves it there. We, however, are ready to get home and slip into comfies.
🚗 4:30–5:00 PM – She usually falls asleep in the car (bless). No music, no toys—just quiet time while we decompress about our workdays and give her some much-needed “boredom time.”
🍽️ 5:00–5:30 PM – Divide and conquer. My husband makes a HelloFresh meal (we’re in our “we will not grocery shop” era), while I chase our daughter around putting away laundry and stopping her from chewing on socks.
👨👩👧 5:30–6:00 PM – We all eat together. She gets her baby-safe version of whatever’s on the menu. We get the joy of watching her smear it across her face and then politely decline the peppers.
🛁 6:00–6:30 PM – Bathtime! One of us supervises bubble splashing while the other tackles the post-dinner battlefield in the kitchen.
📖 6:30–7:00 PM – Yogurt snack, a few board books, and some quiet music time. I play piano while we sing lullabies together. It’s one of my favourite parts of the day.
💤 7:00–7:15 PM – We say goodnight to her “love wall” (photos of her favourite people), pop on pajamas, and settle her into bed in a calm, dark room.
It’s cozy. It’s consistent. And it’s the sweet spot between chaos and calm.