11/7/2010 Rain Walk

I had all sorts of ambitions for today, but they interfered with my #1 top priority: sleep. I wanted to sleep late and wake up when I was ready, and detox my strung-out body from being completely exhausted and running on empty all the time. The time change supported this endeavor, and I rolled my lazy rear end out of bed around 10am (old 11am).

I did manage to go to the Y and then grocery-shopping, but my ideas of getting the kids out of the house by bringing them to the Y with me ran into the realities of time and the ChildWatch closing at 12:30. So I went by myself.

Then at Trader Joe's, I ran into a Mom I know from school, who also has 3 kids and whose oldest was in Gabriel's 1st-grade class and whose 2nd was in Julian's kindergarten class. This year we have no common teachers, but we run into each other a lot and always enjoy catching up. She's about to start a full-time job, and was already feeling very pressed with keeping up with her 3 kids' lives, and I never have anything very encouraging to say about adding full-time work into the mix.

However, our conversation fueled my growing fire to change our after-school child-care from CDC to a nanny, at least for some days. This is something I'm seriously considering for next year, when all 3 are it the same school. Right now, it'd add yet more to an already hefty child-care expense.

But maybe we need to do it sooner anyway. Julian keeps asking about Tae Kwon Do, and the truth is, the absolute last thing I want to do on Saturday mornings after a long week of work is to have to be anywhere at a particular time. That is a weekday after-school thing. I hate the idea of a nanny taking them there instead of me, but the alternative is not at all, which is what's happening now.

Also, Gabriel and his blues piano playing really gets me thinking. I'm not sure he'll take well to lessons yet; he's not exactly Mr. I Must Do What Teachers Say -- but we can't give up on some musical outlet for him. Music is just so woven through his fabric; his brain is so hard-wired to it, I hate to deprive him of the opportunity to develop that now.

So, no grand outing today, but I did come up with the all-time lamest way to get them all out of the house: we did a rain-walk to Starbucks to get them all a treat drink.


This was fun actually!! Julian and Katrina got hot chocolate, and Gabriel got what I would have gotten: a vanilla milk.


But you know, boredom on a rainy day with a lame lazy exhausted Mom isn't necessarily a bad thing for kids. They have to dig deep and find things to do, and they did.

They all three spent at least half an hour huddled around this book, one that is a huge favorite around here. I'm pretty sure it technically belongs to Julian (a gift from Bonne Maman and Papa Paul, who never fail to hit it it out of the park with books), but they all love it. Gabriel spent a fair amount of time reading it to Uncle Ryan last weekend in fact!


Julian considers himself to be the science expert around here, but with funny, nicely written, humorously illustrated, attractive books like this that are packed with facts and make science interesting for kids, they're truly great for everyone. (Sorry for the ad copy but I really do like these books.)

I had been tempted to rent a movie for this rainy day, but the need never really arose. Perhaps my lameness wasn't such a liability after all!

11/7/2010