2-2-3
Two nights, two nights, then three. It runs on a fourteen day cycle, and the longest anyone goes without seeing the kids is three days.
Parent A: 7 nights · Parent B: 7 nights · repeats every 14 days · about 3 handoffs a week.
What it is like
About three handoffs a week. That is a lot of movement, and it is the whole point: for a young child, three days is a manageable stretch and seven is not.
The weekdays rotate. There is no “my Tuesdays” in this pattern, which is the thing most people are surprised by once they start living it.
Suits
Younger children, roughly preschool and early primary, who tend to do better with frequent contact than with long blocks. Parents who live close to each other and to school.
Harder if
Either commute is long, or handoffs are difficult. Three tense exchanges a week is a great deal of tension, and if that is where you are, a pattern with fewer contact points is usually kinder to everyone including the kids.
The mistake people make
Starting on the wrong week. The pattern has two halves and they are mirror images, so beginning on the wrong one silently swaps who gets which weekend for as long as it runs. Check the first month against a calendar before you commit to it.
Try it with your own dates
Runs entirely in your browser, generated from the same logic as the app. No account, no data sent anywhere.
Putting it on a calendar
Once you have picked something, the app will build it. Choose the pattern, set the start date, and it writes the whole schedule into a shared calendar both houses can see. Change it later and it rebuilds without you redoing the year by hand.
One calendar is free, which is all this needs.