Guest Post: A Day In Megan’s Life

Meet our Day In The Life guest writer, Megan! She’s a wife, mom to 2 kids, a Pure Barre instructor, has written a few cookbooks, and lives in Charlotte. Highly recommend checking out her recipes!

A Little About Megan

Hello! I’m Megan, I live in Charlotte (for the second time) with my husband Rob, our two kids (ages 6 and 3), and our almost 10-year-old rescue dog named Ender. 

Rob and I moved around a lot in the earlier days of our marriage, living in Virginia and Minnesota before moving to Charlotte for the first time in 2014. In 2016 we moved across the country to the Bay Area and stayed there until 2020, where my husband worked for a tech company and we had our daughter. Rob’s office closed temporarily at the beginning of the pandemic and he switched to remote work, so in September of 2020 we packed up and drove across the country back to Charlotte, which had always felt like home to us.

Fast forward almost four years and we are loving life on the east coast—Rob still works from home but now gets to travel occasionally to work in-person, our kids are thriving, and I feel grateful every day to be plugged back into this community that I love so much.

Some things about me:

• I became a Pure Barre instructor in 2017 while pregnant with my daughter! It was a huge part of my life in California and now I teach a few classes a week at Pure Barre Ballantyne.
• I have had alopecia areata since I was a little kid–it was always relatively mild until more recently when all my hair fell out. I’ve been wearing wigs for three years now!
• I have a master’s degree in Children’s Literature and wrote my thesis on Disney’s princess films. I am absolutely fascinated by gender and cultural studies.
• Before I was a stay-at-home mom I blogged full time and even wrote a few cookbooks! It was the perfect job while we traveled around for Rob’s career and even though it is more of a hobby for me now, I do love writing and sharing (some of) my life online.

A Day in Megan’s Life

Without further ado, here’s what a day in my life looks like this summer:

4:30 AM If I’m teaching a class, this is when my alarm goes off. (I know.) I am a morning person but even for me this is early. I roll out of bed, throw on the leggings and tank top combo I set out the night before, and tip toe downstairs. Whether I make a coffee this early or not is kind of a game time decision, but either way I fill up my water bottle and get in the car.

5:30 AM – 6:15 AM I absolutely love my morning Pure Barre members–it’s mostly the same group every day of the week and it feels like such a fun tight knit community. The classes I teach most often are 45 minutes and during the school year I usually run home right after but this summer I am trying to hang out and take the next class at 6:30 whenever I can.

6:30 AM – 7:00 AM I’m back home and if everyone is still in bed I will sneak out to take a quick walk. I usually listen to a podcast or practice my class choreo when I’m walking but lately I’ve been listening to the audio version of The Covenant of Water and it is so good.

7:30 AM My 6 year-old daughter usually comes out of her room and meets me downstairs around this time (she wakes up earlier than this but will usually stay in bed and listen to something on her Toniebox or read a little first). She turns on the TV and I make myself a cappuccino. It’s been so nice this summer to have more time together since she was in kindergarten last year and we were adjusting to a new normal of early mornings and getting out the door in time for school.

At some point between 6:30 and 7 my husband is up and grabbing breakfast before he heads to the gym.

8:00 AM I go into my son’s room and get him out of his crib. He just turned 3 and is newly potty trained but we are holding on to the crib for as long as possible (IYKYK). 

8:15 AM – 8:45 AM Breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth—all the morning routine stuff. If the kids have camp or something we will leave to get there at 9:00 but for most of the summer we are planning on hanging out together at home.

9:00 AM – 2:00 PM We might go to the library, a playground, or a splash pad but to be honest I’m not much of a summer girl and would rather let the kids play in our playroom while I soak up the AC. We have nice morning shade in our backyard so oftentimes I will try to get them outside before it gets too hot (and I can watch them from the comfort of my outdoor sofa). Now that my youngest is 3 I do find it way easier to get out and do fun stuff with both kids, though, so I am trying to give us a few things to do each week to balance the time we are home. 

If the kids are happy and keeping themselves busy or away at camp I will unload the dishwasher, fold laundry, and prep dinner as early as humanly possible. (I have quite a few meal ideas in the form of Reels here.) I utilize grocery pick up a lot when both my kids are home because I find that if I take them with me I am often too distracted to actually get what we need, but obviously with them both out of school we will occasionally make a grocery run.

We eat lunch around 12:30, and whenever it works with his schedule my husband will come down from his office and eat with us.

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM Nap time for my son and “quiet time” for my daughter—they both go to their rooms and sleep or read and color, respectively. Transitioning nap time into quiet time as my kids get older has been key in keeping our day running smoothly, giving everyone a break, allowing me to catch up on things around the house, and letting me have a little bit of time to myself as well. Because Rob works from home I am able to give him the baby monitor and run a quick errand during this time if I need to.

4 PM – 5:30 PM Kids are up and everyone has a snack. We will either hang out in the playroom for a while or they watch some TV while I finish getting dinner ready.

5:30 PM – 7:30 PM Dinner, bath, and bedtime! We are routine people and even though we are definitely flexible, we pretty much stick to the same schedule most days, especially when it comes to our evening routine.

7:30 – 9:30 PM Rob and I usually hang out and watch TV together–we usually watch the same old stuff (Friends, The Office, etc.) but try to watch something new-to-us as well. We just finished Succession (wow) and I’m so excited that House of the Dragon is back!

10:00 PM If I am not sound asleep by now I am hopefully at least getting in bed! Even on days I don’t teach, I still wake up around 5:30 or 6:00 AM–I really like to have time to myself in the morning to go on a walk with our dog, read or write, or just drink my coffee on the porch. It makes a huge difference to me and how my day goes!

That’s all from me, thanks for reading! I would love to have you follow along and say hi to me on Instagram! You are welcome to check out my old blog that has tons of posts and recipes but I have not been updating it consistently for some time—if I do post something new you will find it on my Substack, The Next Thing.