Every Mother Is A Working Mother

Some days, this socialization to be agreeable and pleasant is definitely a bug.

Local folks:

Looks like Tuesday is probably going to be a snow day, which means I will need childcare my kids for the morning and early afternoon. Anyone willing for me to send my kids over to your house (or take them with you somewhere fun like the MOS)? I will happily babysit for your children lots and lots in return and/or pay you very well indeed.

It really is immensely hard to concentrate when two kids are giggling and gleefully shouting with great enthusiasm as they are working on building the most ridiculous things they possibly can in Minecraft.

At this moment I am having the impulse to hide my head under my pillow and hope that my childcare problems with resolve themselves if I just ignore them long enough.

That being vanishingly unlikely, however, I am hoping the hive mind will generate some solution that has not yet occurred to me.

So Mondays I now work until 5:15, but my younger child's school Extended Day program closes at 4:30. There is a bus that runs from close by Chip's work to close by the school. The plan had been for Chip to leave work at 4:00 (which is not fabulous but maybe ok once a week), because I am certain when I checked the bus schedule there was a bus that would have gotten him there in time. Bus schedule (whether because I mis-read it or because it has changed) would now require him to leave at 3:30. This suddenly looks like a *far* less feasible plan, because at least in my head this now crosses a line from "leave a little early once a week" to "leave super early once a week". (*Possibly* I could find someone to reliably bring Squiggle to me once a week, and if I can that is what I will probably do. Someone responsible and willing to consistently commit to that is difficult to find, however, and my cost of Monday childcare pretty much already exceeds what I am earning on that day without the added expense.)

What clever solution am I overlooking?

Extra bonus childcare dilemma: After school care for my older kid ends at 5:30, so if I have the car and the traffic co-operates I can just barely get him in time. (This is already a little fraught.) He only has the option of after school care on Mondays, however. (Younger kid can stay for Extended Day T/W/Th if there is space, in addition to having a guaranteed spot every Monday.) Generally I leave work at 2:00 on other days, which allows me to get both kids in time from their respective schools. I seem to need to work until 5:15 far more often than I anticipated on other days, however, *and* on Fridays my younger kid's school does not have Extended Day and closes at 2:30. For extra fun, my older kid really likes the after school program at his school that he does on Mondays (possibly partially because he seems to manage to abandon his homework at school those days due to minimal supervision *sigh*) and so is being astoundingly sullen about other options (and does not seem to be parsing that he doesn't *have* that option any other day).

My older kid is designing increasingly impressive structures with Minecraft. It has also become a huge point of social connection with other kids, something that fills him and them with such shared enthusiasm and joy and has really helped build and deepen a lot of his friendships with other kids. He just lights up talking about it with me and everyone else.

This fills my geeky little soul with utter delight while at the same time I sometimes want to chase him outside to play in the gorgeous weather and wish he was getting more exercise than he is. (I don't usually chase him outside, but I do try a lot find things to do as a family we all really enjoy, like going to the zoo.)

Parenting is complicated. Emotions around parenting are even more complicated. I think all I can do is try to hold onto what I always told other parents when I was teaching and they would go to me for advice. While there are wrong things one can do, there are a lot of often mutually exclusive right things one can do. He is happy in a way hasn't been before, so I silence the voice that chews at me saying pedantically he shouldn't be on the computer that much, and try to look at the kid through the lens of what *he* is finding nourishes him and not the lens of what I have been taught are the rules of how I should parent him.

But I don't know what lens is right and I don't really have an answer. I would probably tell any other parent that was fine, that there are many paths and to trust in the kid and ones instincts, and that perfection is unattainable and irrelevant, but my emotions on this are complicated and somewhat fraught.

Just got back from staying out way too late with hammercock going to Davis Square for ice cream. Which was so very very very exactly what I needed right now. She is made of awesome, and it was completely fabulous to get to spend time with her. :-)

If, say, your exceedingly independent four year old were to attempt to make himself an impressively large volume of a version of chocolate milk (using maple syrup!) while you were busy elsewhere in the house, and then, I expect due to the weight, were to drop it, covering most of the kitchen floor, how would you go about cleaning it? It appears his culinary science experiment has created a substance of immensely tenacious stickiness, and washing it several times has been virtually useless.

Chip built a giant space into the new pantry shelves for all my tea! :-)