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My oldest is in MWF 8:30-12:30.
Some days 12:30 arrives really quickly but most of the time it's perfect.
DH does drop off, I run errands or take care of myself, get the baby up from her nap, we eat lunch and then get big sister.

I think the rhythm works well for us. I like having her home a couple days a week but will probably send her for five days for a couple months after #3 gets here.

She used to be a later riser but we've adjusted to the school schedule just fine. On non-school days I stick to the same schedule.

We are on a MWF, 115 - 415p schedule. Preschool is about 20 minutes away so some days, it doesn't necessarily feel "worth it" for me to come home during the 3 hours. I wish my husband could do drop off or pick up , but unfortunately it falls on me right now. I will usually drop her off and then run errands (grocery shopping, bank, any Doctor appts, etc). Sometimes I'll come home and nap for an hour before heading out again. I do wish the school was closer to me so I wouldn't have to spend so much time driving.

As for timing - last year we went to school 9am -12pm and those days, I just forced her to go to bed earlier the night before , or we took an epic nap when we got home.

I think 4 hours is not a bad amount of time. Right now, LO1 is in preschool 9a-1p 3 days a week. I do both drop-off and pick-up, so I can easily plan on about 9:30a-12:45p to do whatever I need/want to do. I can never do everything I want (ha!) but the highest priority things always get done.

Also, with a newborn, it really won't matter too much. There will definitely be times you have to wake the younger up to go pick up the older. I always tried not to do that, but some days it was just inevitable -- even once we were on more of a schedule!

As for the waking/etc schedule, I would just go with it on the school days -- get her up when she needs to in order to make it on time, nap/bed earlier if she seems tired. She may end up taking a longer nap and then just doing normal bedtime. And on non-school days, I let mine sleep in til whenever they want and then just figure out the rest of the day based on that.

lo goes to preschool for 5 hours (7:30-1230).and I am able to get a ton done, even with the 9 month old home. he goes 2 days per week and it's perfect for us.

4 hours is a good block of time to get stuff done, though sometimes not enough for sure! Yeah, I would not be that thrilled about getting up at 6 am every morning either! Especially having to wake a toddler who actually sleeps in! But I guess you just have to decide what is more important to you. I think if you do 2 or 3 days a week you can just let them sleep in extra on the non-preschool days.

@daniellemybelle: To answer your first question, it makes it SO much better for my 2 year old to get out of the house for a bit. I try to keep naps at home now that we are on 2-3 naps (before I always aimed for 2-3 at home and then others were catnaps...) so I felt like he was constantly trapped in our little house. Him going to preschool twice a week is a huge relief for both of us.

We started off at a more traditional church preschool, from 9-12. For us that was a disaster, because my daughter needed to take her first nap at 8:30. I tried moving it to different times and it just never worked. So waking her up after 20 minutes was awful. Trying to keep her up later was awful. We pulled him out for that reason (and other reasons too). I thought we would just skip preschool this year, but my work picked up and I really wanted to be able to do a bit more, so we found the program he is in now.

For us, the longer program is perfect. DH takes him to preschool on his way to work, so I only have to do pick up. Our program technically runs 7:00-1:00, but the kids in his class go down for their naps at 12:45, so I try to get him before that. My daughter takes her second nap at the same time as my son (somewhere between 1-4) so it works to put her down when we get home. Sometimes she falls asleep in the car, and that little cat nap pushes naptime to the 2-4 range instead of 1-3, but we are making it work.

I am actually able to get quite a bit of work done on those days. I put my desk in our dining room (we moved the table out) and set that room up as a playroom with a gate. The baby can play in there while I work, and I can be with her while she plays on her own. I can stop when I need to and play with her for a bit or feed her or whatever, but she is usually pretty content. She takes an hour and a half nap, so I can work during that time, and then she will either play in the room with me the rest of the time or I will take her to the YMCA and she can play in the nursery while I work there (they have tables and free wifi!). Then, once we pick up my son we come home, have lunch, and then it's naptime. I can reasonably get in about 6-7 hours of work on those days, which is pretty decent I think. It isn't ideal...I would love to have them both in from 7-4 (they offer a 9 hour day as well) but financially it isn't possible unless I was to drastically increase my income. What I make now is okay, but it wouldn't pay for two kids in daycare. The morning program works great for us since I can combine it with naptime. It seems silly to pay all of that extra money for them to nap at school, since I am working at home anyway.

It does have its downsides though. Yesterday my girl was really fussy and I had to hold her through her entire afternoon nap, so I only got 3 hours of work done. Which is not enough to even cover the cost of preschool. So there is some additional stress on me now to make sure I can make up some hours elsewhere.

This is relatively new for us, so we are still working out the kinks. But LO has such a good time at school and I think it is really good for him to be out of the house and interacting with someone other than me for a while, so even if it is not financially "worth it", just that aspect of it is enough.

Sorry for the novel! haha

@daniellemybelle: the baby is still mostly on two naps. My oldest will be three next month and is 50/50 on naps lately. I often get a double nap which is awesome. She has lunch at school, comes home has a snack (she eats her lunch but likes her snacks too I guess), then we have quiet time together in her room reading, I leave her reading and close her door to put the baby to bed, and she usually falls asleep while I'm gone.

@daniellemybelle: During that time, I was working around 20 hours a week.

I found it a challenge to finish something, but that might be the nature of my work. There is very little that I can actually complete myself, I depend on a lot of other people and am a prisoner to their hours, if you will.