Mornings With Two Under Five: I Still Haven’t Cracked the Code, But I Have Some Messy Tricks
I’m writing this sitting in my car outside the preschool parking lot, 12 minutes early for pickup, which is the first time that’s happened in three years. This morning, I only spilled coffee on my pants instead of my whole shirt, my 3-year-old only had one full meltdown about wearing socks, and we didn’t forget my 5-year-old’s show-and-tell rock. I’m counting that as a major win. Not long ago, I’d have called that a failure, because I read so many posts that told me if I just prep right, I can have a peaceful, productive morning with small kids that sets me up for the whole day. Ha.
Before kids, I was that person who did the 5 a.m. miracle morning routine. I’d journal, run three miles, pull espresso shots with my fancy machine, and get to work an hour early just to get a head start. Now the idea of waking up at 5 a.m. makes me want to cry into my pillow. I tried it once, three months after my second was born, and fell asleep on the treadmill mid-workout, face planted right into the console. Never again.
All the standard advice sounds great, right? Lay out everyone’s clothes the night before. Prep breakfast the night before. Wake up before the kids to get your stuff done. I do lay out clothes, most nights. But last week, my daughter Lila decided her laid-out leggings were “too prickly” at 7 a.m., dug out the sparkly tutu she wore to a birthday party two months ago that had been sitting in the hamper, and refused to wear anything else. I stood there screaming into my coffee mug for five minutes before I remembered I stuffed a clean (well, clean enough, it has a tiny ice cream stain on the hem) tutu in the back of her drawer for exactly this. That trick isn’t in any advice list. That’s just something you learn after the 17th fight about clothes before 8 a.m.
Two weeks ago, I showed up to a team meeting wearing one navy blue sneaker and one black one. No one said anything until my lunch break, when I looked down and realized it myself. How did that happen? I was grabbing my shoes while breaking up a fight over who got the blue cereal spoon, and I just grabbed the first two I saw by the door. I used to be so embarrassed by stuff like that. Now I just tell anyone who notices, yeah, I have two little kids, this is what my life is, and they just nod because half of them have been there too. Now I keep a matched pair of old sneakers by the front door, just for me, so I don’t do that again. Small thing, but it changed my mornings a little.
The only thing that’s stuck for me, after three years of trial and error, is setting my alarm 15 minutes earlier than the kids’ wake up. That’s it. I don’t meditate, I don’t work out, I don’t answer emails, I don’t fold laundry. I just stand next to the coffee maker, drink my whole cup hot, and scroll through stupid meme accounts of other parents talking about messy mornings. I used to feel guilty for that, like I was wasting precious me time. Now I know if I don’t get 15 minutes where no one is asking me to wipe their butt or get them a another snack or fix a broken toy, I’m going to be the mom who yells over a spilled bowl of cereal, and no one needs that. That 15 minutes of doing nothing is the most productive thing I do all morning.
People love to say “just let go of expectations, it’s okay to be late” and that sounds nice, but that never worked for me. I can’t be late to my job three times a week, and Lila gets really upset when she misses her favorite goldfish snack time at preschool. I tried the whole “go with the flow” thing for a month once, and we ended up with my boss pulling me aside for a chat about attendance, and Lila crying in the car line twice because she missed snack. So that balance no one talks about is real, right? If you’re too rigid, everyone cries when something inevitably goes off plan. If you’re too chill, you end up with a mess that stresses you out way more than a little structure would have.
I used to spend 20 minutes every morning making homemade oatmeal with chia seeds and fresh berries, because I thought that’s what good moms do. Half the time my kids wouldn’t eat it anyway, and I’d end up scraping it into the garbage while they asked for cereal. Now it’s frozen waffles or cereal 90% of the time. I keep a big stash of granola bars in the entry closet and another in my car’s center console, so if we’re running late, everyone grabs one and eats in the car. I felt terrible about that for a long time, until I mentioned it to my pediatrician at the last checkup, and she laughed and said her kids ate granola bars in the car every morning for five years. So that’s that.
Today, after we dropped the kids off, I got halfway to work before I realized Lila’s stuffed rabbit Bunny was still in my jacket pocket. She makes me hold him when we walk out the door, then forgets she brought him. I could have turned around, drove 10 minutes back to preschool to drop him off, like I did last time. Today I just stuck him in the cup holder next to my cold coffee. He’ll be fine for a few hours.
Some mornings I still forget everything. Some mornings we leave 20 minutes late and everyone’s crying in the car. I don’t have a perfect system. I don’t think anyone does, not really. All the people posting their perfectly organized morning routines online don’t have small kids, or they’re lying. I’m okay with messy now. I don’t need a peaceful morning. I just need most mornings to not end with me sitting on the kitchen floor crying, and that’s enough. Some days even that doesn’t happen, and I just make a stronger coffee after drop off and try again tomorrow.
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