1/18/2010 Stormy Day

The perfect storm: a windy, rainy day, school's out, and the cleaners are coming. That means all 3 kids at home all day, we have to be out of the house for at least 3 hours, and no playing outside at all. Great.

Often I'm not quite sure when the cleaners arrive, which means I'm not quite sure when they're done either. They're supposed to arrive at 10:30, but it can vary. When I'm working, it'd doesn't matter. When I'm home with all 3, it really does.

Last time the cleaners came on a day off from school, we got home as they were wrapping up. This is such a pain -- we can't be inside at all without really getting in their way. They mop the floors near the door last (so that they don't leave footprints), adding to the difficulty of getting home when they're still there.

Today the cleaners solved that dilemma: they arrived at 9:30. Early. Way early. We so weren't ready -- we were all upstairs, none of the kids had had breakfast, I had just barely gotten dressed (hey, it's a holiday!) and was still tidying up upstairs. Mad scramble!

The cleaners started upstairs, and I managed to get the kids fed and ready and into the car before the cleaners moved downstairs. Quick email check before zooming out: oh wow, Gabriel's been invited to a last-minute rainy-day playdate, in 15 minutes. The boys started fighting this morning even before their eyelids were completely open -- by 8:30 am, Julian had already been punched twice -- so I was very grateful to have a respite from fraternal battery.

I dropped Gabriel off, making a note of how high the stack of favors is getting that I owe this friend. Zipped off to the gym and gladly deposited the other two in the gym's childcare. They like going to the old gym, despite the much smaller, darker and truly inadequate childcare as compared to the Y -- but they get to watch videos, so they like it.

We were all home and lunched and ready to hang by 1:40, the cleaners done and gone. The day started looking up right then.

Katrina is so funny about rain. As soon as she see it raining, she yelps for joy. Then she makes a beeline for her rain jacket, demands noisily that it get zipped for her, puts on her boots, and zooms outside. It can be truly difficult to wrest her away from her puddle-jumping, no matter how cold or wet or dark it gets. All kids like splashing in puddles of course, but the boys were never so adamant about it as Katrina is.


I think she's really going to like snow.

1/18/2010