An Odd Week

Mid-Winter Break.  Not the easiest thing to navigate with two working parents.  The college kids are in school still.  You don't get time off from work. And Anna threw a fit when I suggested the Y childcare all day.

Jeff took Monday off.  The girls fended for themselves on Tuesday.  And did really well.  I did get funny texts throughout the day like "Can I use the oven?" Me: "What are you making?" Molly: "It's a surprise!" A little fear in my heart.  And then "Do we have brown sugar?" "Do we have chocolate chips?" Not so much a surprise anymore...  A little later on "Anna has her black Harry Potter robe on backwards and is running around being a dementor." I sent a quick call home to make sure this was not code for "Anna is being unmanageably bad." A little later on "Look what I found!" with a picture of Biscuit perched on the living room couch (the one he's not allowed on) looking out the window (probably barking at everything that moved).  I pried my fingers off of the last hope that I can keep a well-ordered house these days.

Wednesday I took a vacation day and we had plans with the LaDuc girls to skate at the Clinton Square rink and have lunch. But alas, I woke up with a raging case of the stomach flu. So the poor girls pretty much fended for themselves again.  Molly was a dear and made me a cup of tea and took care of feeding her sister lunch and dinner.  It is so much easier to be sick with a 13 and 7 year old than it is, say, with an 8 and 2 year old. By 9 pm, though, I heard Moll holler, "I have been nice to you for TWO WHOLE DAYS!" in response to some little sister bratty-ness.

So today Anna came to work with me and Moll had the house to herself and Biscuit.  I think Molly thoroughly enjoyed that.  Anna too.  She did little tasks around the office like staple packets together,watched a couple of movies on Dad's borrowed Ipad in our empty office that I think she pretended was her own, ate lunch in the breakroom that hardly anyone else eats in, spied the vending machines there and managed to talk mom into getting a snack out of them later, colored on Mom's white board and the entire rest of Mom's yellow stenopad and a little on Mom's desk, left Mom little notes around her office, and ate some peppermint patties from Mom's candy jar.  When it was time to leave, she cried and cried. Tonight at bedtime, she asked if she could please come with me tomorrow. 

But tomorrow Dad is taking off, so she's staying home with him and sis.  I think he's taking them to the library.  We figured it out, somehow, this Mid-Winter Break week. It's probably not too early to start planning for Spring Break.....