This looks like it could be handy for scheduling all kinds of co-parenting things from phone calls to doctors’ appointments to vacation schedules. The neat thing about it is that it just shows you a grid of all the invitees’ availablity — invitees can add short comments when they are clicking on their available times, but you don’t have to send out, sort through and distill a bunch of emails (or make a bunch of phone calls) to find a time that works for everyone. We haven’t used it yet across houses, but I’m bookmarking it because it looks pretty neat.

When I first got involved in helping the kids navigate through their daily lives, there were so many friends and appointments and lessons that it was hard for me to remember where they all were, or even to keep track of all of the addresses. So, I created a private Google map. Every time I got a new address, I Googled it. The Google map that came up in my search results gave me the option of saving the address, marked with a pushpin, to my private Google map, along with any other information I wanted to add (like friends’ parents’ names and phone numbers). Now any time I need to remember out how to get somewhere the kids go on a regular basis, I pull up my private Google map and all their friends’, doctors’, dentists’, and music teachers’ addresses are right there, marked with different colored virtual push pins on my map.

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• Two houses, one email address
• Two houses, one calendar
• Two houses, one spreadsheet

To keep track of expenses that we split between the houses, we went to Google Documents and created a shared spreadsheet. Whenever one house pays an expense we’ve agreed to split between houses, that house enters the expense into the spreadsheet. Every so often we tally up what we owe each other and one house writes the other a check. We can all log in to the spreadsheet from anywhere we have an internet connection, and if more than one of us is logged in at once, we can open a chat window inside the spreadsheet and chat while we’re entering numbers together. You can sign up to be notified by email when a spreadsheet is updated, and you can go back in time and view past versions — both handy features for shared group work.

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• Two houses, one email address
• Two houses, one calendar
• Five gazillion places to go, one map

When I log into Google Calendar, I see:

• My personal calendar (dark green; visible to me and G, but only I can edit this calendar)
• The G & Jill household calendar (light green; visible to me, G, Kathy, and both kids): here G & I enter household events that affect the kids lives or that might be helpful for Kathy and the kids when they are at the other house to know about when planning appointments or when looking into schedule changes
• The kids’ calendar (pink; visible to me, G, Kathy, and both kids): here all five of us can enter the kids’ events — birthday parties, school calendar items, music lessons, performances, etc.
• Kathy’s household calendar (taupe; visible to Kathy, me, G and the kids): Kathy enters events that might affect the kids’ lives at her place and that might be helpful for us to know about when planning appointments or looking into possible schedule changes.

Privacy

We select the “do not share this calendar with everyone” option, and instead share our calendars just with each other. (“Sharing the calendar with everyone” would mean making it public on the internet and having our calendar items be searchable through Google — which is a great idea for groups that want members of the public at their events, but not for families.)

For each calendar you create, you can decide who to share it with, whether they can edit it, whether they can share it with others, and whether they can see event details or just busy blocks of time.

RSS

It’s also possible to subscribe to a private RSS feed for changes to any of the calendars. I subscribe to the feed for updates to the kids’ calendar in Google Reader.

In real life

Our shared calendar is a central repository for upcoming events we all know about. I use it as my main calendar, and G and Kathy use it sometimes — often as a secondary calendar. Still, it’s helpful for keeping us all on the same page.

Related posts:

• Two houses, one email address
• Two houses, one spreadsheet
• Five gazillion places to go, one map

When trying to run childrens’ lives from two separate addresses, good communication makes all the difference. During the period of time when we were working out our boundary issues, communication was at an all time low and it was hellacious. Bits of logistics were exchanged between me and the kid’s dad in terse terms when we couldn’t successfully avoid each other at school functions. Monosyllabic emails were lobbed across the virtual fence like little grenades.

Here are my first five tips on how to achieve decent communication between you and the other household:

1) The key thing to starting good communication is to try to dump the stereotypes as soon as possible. Don’t call your “ex” your “ex” (or anything worse). Call him by his name. And don’t call his girlfriend/wife “my ex’s girlfriend or wife” (or worse). She also has a name. Calling them their “human” names rather than their labels is a good start.

2) What’s not said is often as important as what’s said. Try to NOT always talk about logistics when you get together. We have a rule — once spoken, now kind of tacitly understood — that social functions should not be excuses to pull out the daytimers and figure out your next summer’s vacation schedules. If you need a logistics conversation, schedule it. Don’t make everything into how you’re divvying up the kids, or time, or money, or other such highly emotional subjects.

3) You once liked this guy. And he once liked you. Try to find the one or two things you still really appreciate him, and don’t forget that underneath all the baggage, he’s still got some good qualities. Similarly, he is invariably going to like some aspects of his girlfriend/wife for the same reason he liked you. Which means — guess what? — by definition you and the step mom are almost certainly going to have some things, somewhere, in common with each other.

She’s quite possibly someone you would like if you ran into her at Starbucks over a latte. Try doing that sometimes… again avoiding issues that are fraught with emotional content. Hang out a little. Dish movie stars or make goo goo eyes at the barista. The more you dilute the situation with good old fashioned girltalk, the better your bond will be able to withstand the inherant discomforts of your roles in each other lives.

4) Try to start fresh every time you meet and don’t bring the garbage pile into every room with you. Let it go.

5) We have a very tightly interwoven schedule. So the kids are always moving from one house to the other. The DHX has become our conveyance mechanism to get information across the border to the other house. It works when you’re not so friendly with each other. And it works when you are. It keeps all the little bureaucratic minutia more or less in one place. Put it in a backpack, make eye contact when you get the child to promise to deliver it faithfully, and — if the promise is made good– voila, a built in courier service.

There’s lots more to say about communication. More later.