A Day In The Park

I feel bad for Allie and Avery when it comes to their summer vacation. Other kids go to camp, take cool classes, have play dates, etc while the two of them have to hang out with me all day. In the big scheme of things (read: given the economic situation) it works out better to have them watch me write and hunt down jobs while staying couped up in the loft with no yard or playground nearby. Now that's a summer to remember.

[Allie] Remember that summer we'd wake up early and find Ron sitting in his boxers in front of the computer and we'd tell him we were hungry and he'd say, 'I put the milk on the bottom shelf so fix your own cereal,' and we'd say, 'we're outta cereal,' and he'd say, 'well, then just put the milk on something else because milk poured on anything is a breakfast,' and so we'd eat raw hot dogs with milk on them?


[Avery] Ya, and then we'd find him at lunch and he'd still be in his undies - the superman ones - and he'd still be looking at the computer and we'd ask for lunch and he'd say, 'I put the hot dogs on the bottom shelf so go fix your own lunch,' and we'd say, 'we're outta hot dogs,' and he'd just look at us and say, 'go figure it out yourselves,' and so we'd eat vanilla extract with cloves in frozen pie crusts?

[Allie] That was a fun summer.

[Avery] I like cloves better than hot dogs.

[Allie] I like hot dogs, but only with a low-fat milk chaser... and I like to smoke cloves.

[Avery] Ya, that was a great summer. What time is your therapy session?

[Allie] This afternoon. How do you like those anti-depressants I recommended?


Okay, so it might not be that bad (I hope), but plopping them in front of a TV for the next several weeks while I Twitter my brains out isn't what they deserve either. Like many of you, I've been finding that degree of balance needed to allow me get work done, but without ignoring the girls in the process. What seems to be working so far is doing daily chores together and then finding an activity outside of the loft. By the time we get back, the girls are sick of looking at me, which allows me to get some work done.

Now, I imagine there's a whole bunch of people out there who are fully aware of how to achieve this sort of balance as you've been doing it for years. My hat's truly off to you as I've been learning how hard it can be to have the role as the stay-at-home parent. It's interesting (and fun) what I've discovering about myself and about the girls.

This week we did a few things like go to the library, see a (free) play about Snow White and frolic (them, not me) in the fountains at the city's newest park.