My weekend routine

A typical Friday to Sunday at home.

After spending so much of April out of town, I have been relishing our weekends at home this month. It has been so nice to sleep in my own bed in a clean house and spend time with friends and be back in our normal routine! When it comes to weekends at home, we’re pretty consistent in a few ways:

• Friday nights are low-key. We’ll either do a family movie night or get takeout with neighbors (and let the kids watch a movie while the adults catch up). Sometimes I cook, sometimes we get takeout pizza or Thai.

• On weekend mornings, we trade off taking Jojo to the YMCA. Whoever takes her can get in a workout, and whoever stays home can do whatever they want. David usually takes advantage of this time for woodworking, and this is my time to do a big weekend deep clean while listening to an audiobook (my dream!).

• While we don’t do them every single weekend, our standard rotation of activity options includes going to the farmers market (usually La Jolla on Sunday mornings), spending the afternoon at the beach (generally La Jolla Shores), swimming at the YMCA (or in a neighbor’s pool, if we can swing an invite), hanging out with our neighbors in someone’s front or back yard, or heading to Balboa Park for the zoo, a museum, the carousel or a drink in the sculpture garden.

• I stick to the same bedtime/wake-up time as I do the rest of the week: I’m extremely committed to this as part of my overall sleep routine.

• We usually get a babysitter about once a month for a weekend date night or a day date.

Here’s a peek into a typical weekend schedule for me (this was last weekend!):

Friday

Our cleaning lady came this morning while I was meeting with a mentee and then doing some work from a coffee shop, so I’m feeling the specific type of joy that comes from the sun shining and a clean house (is there a Swedish word for this??). I also always change our sheets and towels on Friday: I very much like to start my weekend with that fresh, crisp feeling!

I walk to pick up Jojo from preschool around 4pm. Her preschool is just down the street from us, and we love the school itself AND that it’s a five-minute walk. I just put in her 60-day notice few days ago—she’ll be attending our local public school’s TK in the fall—and I’ve been feeling extra emotional this week about the end of this chapter.

Once I pick her up, we walk over to our local playground. I’ve become better friends with a group of moms I met in the park when Jojo was a baby, and one in particular shares my interest in getting involved in our local town council. We’ve been attending the monthly meetings together, and she just went to a meeting the night before about joining the board—so we set up this playground date so that we can debrief while the kids play. We’re also scheming on a park improvement and beautification plan for the very park we’re in using some of the town council funds, so we chat about how we can bring that dream to fruition.

Around 5pm, we walk home to use the bathroom, wash our hands and generally get a little cleaned up. Then we walk down our street to meet up for dinner with some neighbors who have a 6-year-old daughter. There’s a taco stand fundraiser popup every Friday night outside the nearby church, and the tacos are good! We walk over to get some adobada and carne asada tacos with our neighbors, and then go back and watch the NBA playoffs game while we eat in their garage (that’s basically a living room). The husband is an expert margarita maker, which is a huge perk of eating at their house—as is a slightly older kid who is happy to entertain Jojo (and who has a room full of toys where Jojo is happy to entertain herself).

Around 7:30pm or so, we walk home. David oversees Jojo bath time while I make sure the dishwasher is loaded and do a general pickup around the house. By 8pm, Jojo is asleep and the kitchen is clean.

I take a joyrise: since I rarely have more than one glass of wine these days, I know two margaritas might hit me in the morning. It helps your body metabolize alcohol more effectively—as I get older, I’m apt to take them if I ever have more than two drinks (or particularly sugary drinks) just to ensure I still feel great the next morning.

I’m in bed by 9pm, and I have about 40 pages left in the book I’m reading—Evenings and Weekends. I decide that I want to finish it that night, even if it means it keeps me up a little late. Living on the wild side on a Friday night! I turn off the lights around 10pm after finishing the book—it’s a good one, and I’m glad I picked it up in London.

Saturday

I wake up without an alarm usually around 6am every day, but don’t always immediately hop out of bed (especially on the weekends). I take a shower around 6:15am and then snuggle back in bed for 10 minutes with my red light mask. When I get back up to blow dry my hair, Jojo is also awake (her Hatch turns green at 6:45am, and after that, it’s fair game to get up and at em!).

I set up Jojo with a yogurt at the kitchen table and take the pugs out for a quick walk. When I come back, I put some oatmeal on the stove while David makes coffee.

The most consistent part of our weekends is going to the YMCA. Every Saturday, Jojo goes to a gymnastics class first (during which I usually read a book or write a Substack post while drinking a coffee since I have to stay in the “vicinity” of the gymnastics area, but not in the actual class) and then she goes to Child Watch for an hour and a half (during which I usually work out and then meal plan and write my grocery list for the week). Gym childcare is truly a core part of my happy parenthood, I cannot say enough good things about it.

While I usually take her on Saturdays and David takes her to Child Watch on Sundays, we switched this week so that I could go to the La Jolla Secret Garden Tour! David heads off to the Y with Jojo around 8:45am, and I quickly throw a load of laundry in, put on some makeup and put in an online coffee order (although it’s mostly so that I can have a cardamom bun). My friend Katie picks me at 9:20am: our household only has one car, so I am often reliant on carpooling (or the occasional Lyft). I buy the coffees in return for her driving!

While this is our third weekend in a row doing some kind of local design tour (we previously did the Clairemont Garden Tour and the Coronado Historical Home Tour), this is our first time ever doing the La Jolla tour. It absolutely delivers! We are ooh-ing and aah-ing and swooning the whole time.

I get home around noon (Jojo and David aren’t home yet) and see what’s in the fridge for lunch. I have some leftover rice and larb from Thursday dinner, so I throw that in a bowl. Jojo and David get home around 1pm—they had a lunch date at Chick-fil-A.

Since David has been on Jojo duty for the morning, I take over for the afternoon so that David can do some woodworking—he is currently making us a beautiful coffee table. Katie mentioned that a new playground in the neighborhood has finally opened after being under construction for months, so Jojo and I decide to check it out. It’s really nice (and still so shiny and new!), and we run into neighborhood friends (from my book club) while we’re there. I catch up with the mom while the girls all play.

When we get home, we make a lemony turmeric tea cake. Jojo loves to “help” in the kitchen, so I’m trying to find more opportunities to get her involved. This is a good one since it’s a pretty straightforward “mix all the dry ingredients, mix all the wet ingredients, then mix them together” type of recipe—I also make it a lot, so I’m familiar with the routine. While the cake is in the oven, we do some painting in our backyard. I’m not much of an arts and crafts mom, but we always have washable project paint and thick paper on hand.

Our handyman shows up around 4pm to finish a project for us, and he brings along his 6-year-old daughter (they live the next street over). This is a godsend for me: Jojo is stoked to show this new friend all of her toys, so they happily play together while I do a bit of straightening up around the house.

At 5pm, we hop in the car and head over to the ocean for a pizza picnic. We pick up pizza at Wayfarer: it’s a fantastic and very popular bakery—the lines are nuts on weekend mornings, but on the weekends, you can preorder a pizza (and salad, and bottle of wine) to-go. Conveniently, it’s located just a few blocks from the ocean and Calumet Park, my favorite spot for a sunset picnic. In addition to eating pizza and taking in the view, Jojo does a few scooter laps around the park, and we play a few games of tag and hide-and-seek before heading home.

We get home around 7:30pm and do a bath for Jojo before she falls asleep. She still has a nap time at school during the week, but we dropped the weekend nap when she was about 3.5 years old. The upside is that weekend bedtime is generally VERY smooth and she falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow.

Since she’s asleep early, we watch a bit of Survivor on the couch. At 9pm, I head in to wash my face and get ready for bed. I start My Friends, a book I picked up in London before going to sleep (lights out at 9:30pm!).

Sunday

I sleep in until 6:30am, a real coup (and get a 100 sleep score!). I manage to take a quick shower and walk the pugs before Jojo wakes up. For breakfast, Jojo and I both have a bowl of Grape-Nuts with honey and dried blueberries (I am Grape-Nuts devotee, and it’s very satisfying to me that Jojo loves them as much as me). Jojo is also an assistant barista to David, helping with measuring and grinding the beans every morning.

We leave just after 8am to head to the YMCA. Jojo heads to Child Watch and I do a Sculpt Society workout (a 30-minute Full Body). Instead of my laptop or a book, I brought the Sunday New York Times. We get home delivery on Sundays, and it can be tough to find the time to sit down and read the paper even though I love it. For the rest of the time that Jojo is in Child Watch, I read the paper (and then leave it behind for someone else to enjoy!). There’s a “summer cooking” insert, which is perfect inspiration for meal planning for the week. I figure out what we’re having for dinner for the next few nights and write out a grocery list on my yellow tablet.

At 10am, I pick up Jojo and we head to Trader Joe’s to do our grocery shopping for the week. It’s peony season, so we obviously get a bouquet, in addition to our groceries for the week.

The big item on our afternoon agenda is a lemonade stand! Jojo and her friend (who’s 6) are doing it together, so we come home and start to get things organized. I squeeze a bajillion lemons (graciously donated by a neighbor—I had not before met this neighbor but I saw their overflowing lemon tree and asked if we could pick it for said lemonade stand, and they were happy to agree) while Jojo has an Uncrustable and apple slices for lunch.

The gals set up outside our house around 1pm. How cute are the personalized LEMON HEAD hats that my friend Katie made for them?? We’ve got homemade lemonade (made with local lemons), spa water (with lemons and mint from our garden), slices of the lemon turmeric tea cake we made yesterday and lemon zest rice krispy treats made by Katie. They do a good business, netting about $70 (everything cost $1, but they got some nice tips!) in two hours before they get bored and we call it a day.

Part of the lemonade stand promise was that Jojo would get to buy whatever she wanted with the money she earned, so we pop over to Target as soon as the stand closes. She spent $32.31 of her $33 cash on a set of Frozen Barbies, and was absolutely thrilled.

David’s old Williamsburg roommate and her wife moved out to San Diego last year (we’re slowly trying to get all of our NYC friends out here!), and they popped over in the afternoon to hang out in our living room. It was nice to chat with them while I cleaned up the kitchen and prepped things for dinner. Very deep casual hosting!

Inspired by the NYTimes summer cooking section that morning, I made this cold noodle salad with a spicy peanut sauce. I think it could have used a higher veggie ratio, but overall, very good—will definitely make it into the summer rotation! Our friends head home, and we turn on the basketball game (Cavs-Pistons game 7!) and eat dinner. I love both basketball and any sport once it’s in the playoffs, and the NBA playoffs are always my favorite time of year. We’re especially invested since the Knicks (David’s team!) are in the Eastern Conference Finals—while I’m still bemoaning the collapse of the Sacramento Kings, our former (EXCELLENT) coach Mike Brown is now the coach of the Knicks so I don’t feel too bad about cheering for them (although I deeply wish Sacramento could pull it together and that I don’t have to wait for another 20 years to attend a playoff game, but I digress).

It’s been a big day for Jojo, and she is asleep by 7:15pm. Hallelujah! Once she’s asleep, I clean up the kitchen and write out my to-do list for Monday.

I then take advantage of this early bedtime with a hot bath for myself. David got me this lovely bath pillow for Mother’s Day, which really elevates the whole reading-in-bath experience. I light a candle, turn on the peaceful piano playlist, read my book—it’s a whole spa vibe in there. After I wash my face and do my skincare routine, I put on my pajamas and realize I still have enough time to do an “improve your sleep” compression leggings 25-minute session. The dream! I do that in bed, and then am quite happy to turn off the light and go to sleep by 9:30. Another week awaits!

On the agenda for this long weekend: mornings at the YMCA, hosting our neighborhood’s annual “summer kickoff” block party, unveiling the Costco dinosaur waterslide in my front yard, perhaps a visit to the YMCA pool or the beach, and a mother-daughter manicure (an early treat for Jojo’s birthday!).