Yesterday we experienced our first official school snow day. As a working parent, this is a new one for me. I think we may have had one time ever that day care closed and nobody was getting out on the roads anyway. I found myself in a sudden panic over what to do with Zachary, although once Evie woke up I knew I was going to stay home. She is going through the most horrible cold ever and still wasn’t well enough to go back to day care.
We spent the day at home. I spent the day frantically trying to get some work done in between starting TV shows, giving hugs, dragging out toys, and refilling milk cups. The kids? They were thrilled to have another day at home. I worked up until about 3:30, when they finally convinced me to take them outside to play in the snow.
Hubby was home as well, but since he was on-call for work, I couldn’t leave him with the kids. With snowy roads, he would have needed to leave immediately if he would have been called out on a job. There wouldn’t have been a big enough time gap to wait for me to get home first.
All of this got me thinking about what other parents of school-age kids do when there is a snow day or teacher work day and the kids are out of school. I’m lucky that my boss doesn’t mind me bringing the kids to the office occasionally, and I’ve taken advantage of that several times this year already. The problem is, I’m not sure how long he’ll put up with it. I certainly don’t want it to become a nuisance. We’re on day two of snow days this week and since Evie could finally go back to day care, he came to the office with me. The good thing is that he is very well behaved at the office. As long as he has his DSi or can play games on the Disney web site he’s a happy camper.
Somewhere along the way, we’re going to have to find a better solution though. There are several more days coming up that he’ll be out of school, and probably another snow day or two, not to mention Spring Break or SUMMER(!). We were lucky to have the in-laws here over winter break to help out, but we can’t expect them to do that every year. We don’t have a regular baby-sitter (Grandma, aunts, and uncles are nearby when we need an evening out) and Zach has decided that he’s way too old to go to day care with his sister (plus her cut-off is 5 yrs) so I’m just kind of stuck. We don’t know a lot of people that live nearby that might suggest a sitter in our area either.
What I would really love to find is a local college student that would be available on those days, but how do you even go about finding someone like that when you don’t know any? What do other people do with their kids when there’s no school and they have to be at work?
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