I want to talk about mornings. Not the aspirational version, we have already covered that. This one is specifically about what it looks like to get two small humans out the door every single day and arrive at school drop off still somewhat intact and in a decent mood.
Because I think the first two hours of a mom’s day deserve a little more credit than they get.
How it starts — me first
I try to get up somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30 on a good day. On a not so good day, it is closer to 6:00 and the whole morning shifts accordingly. Ideally, I like to get myself completely ready before my girls are even out of bed; face washed, skincare done, makeup on, dressed, teeth brushed. The goal is to be a functioning human before anyone starts asking me for anything. It does not always happen, but it is always the goal.
Getting the girls up — enter the chore chart
I try to have my girls up between 6:00 and 6:15am. Once they are up, they follow their own chore chart, and I want to talk about this because it has genuinely changed our mornings.
The chore chart covers everything they are responsible for on their own, getting dressed, brushing teeth, putting shoes on, grabbing their school snacks, and pulling their lunch sides together (because I handle the main course). They also make their own breakfast. Right now, they are on a Kodiak French Toast kick, and I am fully on board with that because Kodiak has protein built in and I always have them add an additional protein like yogurt, cottage cheese, and then some kind of fruit. Something healthy, something filling, something that gets them through to snack time without a hunger meltdown at 9am.
On the days I am still getting ready when they wake up, which happens, they can move through their chart completely independently. That is the whole point. They do not need me standing over them for every step and that has been a game changer for all of us.
Why the chore chart matters beyond just mornings –
I want to be clear that the chore chart is not just about making my mornings easier, although it absolutely does that. It’s about teaching them things I think are genuinely important like autonomy, responsibility, how to complete a task, time management, and the value of doing something to earn a reward.
Every completed chore chart earns a gold star. Gold stars go on a chart we keep on the fridge. At 30 gold stars we do something special, it is their choice – Kids Empire, Peter Piper Pizza, trampoline parks, something fun. They work toward it and they feel it when they get there.
Brooklyn is seven (and a half) and she moves through her chart every single morning without issue. Aubrey just turned six and she still needs several reminders and a little extra motivation. She is also the baby of the family, and I give her grace for that. Neither of them is perfect every day but both of them are doing something I was doing entirely for them not that long ago and that matters.
Hair, bickering, and the goal of 7:15 –
I fit hair in wherever it fits, sometimes between their chores, sometimes after breakfast, sometimes I am doing a ponytail in the car. It depends entirely on how the morning has gone.
The bickering is constant and non-negotiable. “She’s looking at me,” “She is touching me,” “She is bossing me around.” It is a rotating playlist of the same six complaints, and I have heard every version of all of them. I have accepted that this is just the soundtrack of our mornings and I manage it accordingly.
Our target is out the door by 7:15. It takes about 20 minutes to get to school, and they don’t need to be there until 8:00, so 7:15 gives us breathing room. Most days we are out by 7:25. We always make it, even if its just by the skin of our teeth.
The car, brief peace followed by more chaos –
My girls have tablets for the car. They stay in the car, that is the rule. Whether it is a 20-minute drive to school, a 25-minute drive to gymnastics, or a 10-hour trip to Arkansas to see family, the tablets are a car activity. In theory, this is genius. In practice someone’s volume is always too loud, or they cannot agree on a song or one tablet is dead and suddenly the whole system falls apart. It is always something.
The part I feel a little guilty about –
Here is the honest part. After drop-off, after the bickering and the reminders and the hair and the forgotten water bottle and the negotiating and the tablets, when I pull away from school there is this moment. A long exhale, a quiet car, a reset.
I feel guilty about how good that feels.
I guess it’s because, I love my girls completely but also those first two hours can be almost as exhausting as a full workday before the workday actually begins. Playing referee for a six and seven-year-old for an hour and a half before 8am is genuinely tiring. And the relief I feel when I drop them off is not a reflection of how much I love them; it’s just a very human response to an objectively intense morning.
If you feel that too, the exhale, the quiet, the tiny moment of relief, I just want you to know that does not make you a bad mom. It makes you a mom who gave everything she had from 5:30am to 7:30am and finally got to breathe.
You earned that exhale. 🤍
XO, Sabrina
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