Finding alone time in a full house has proven to be “challenging at times” for Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves McConaughey. “Sometimes you go through the day and you got the kids’ remote schooling, you get everyone set up, you’re doing meals you’re running around. I’m doing my work, she’s doing hers, and sometimes it’ll be at 9:30 at night or 10 o’clock where we actually look at each other and go, ‘Oh, hi, how are you?’” the dad of three told Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show.

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Matthew continued, “But she’s pretty good at scheduling and we’re getting a little bit better at creating some structure, not only for the kids but for us and saying, ‘Hey, from this time to this time don’t come knocking. Don’t come knocking on the door, or we’re going out to eat, you guys handle it yourselves, or you guys set your alarms, handle yourself for breakfast [and] everything else. We’re gonna have our time.’”

The Dallas Buyers Club star, 51, and his Brazilian-born wife, whom he married in 2012, have been quarantining with their three kids—daughter Vida, 10, and sons Levi, 12, and Livingston, seven—as well as with the actor’s mother Kay McConaughey for the past “seven months.” “It’s been going on long enough to sometimes say, when you say how many kids you have in the house, I say four: a 12, 10, seven and an 88 year old,” the Oscar winner said.

Mathew recently admitted that fatherhood was his “only dream.” “The only thing I ever knew I wanted to be was a father,” the Greenlights author confessed to People magazine. “And it’s remained the pinnacle for me. Being a dad was always my only dream.... I can’t think of anything being more important.”