School’s out, camp’s not started, a week of juggling

It’s been an interesting week. School’s been out since 11:30am a week ago today, and while Monday was a holiday (Memorial day,) we’ve been without childcare for the 5yo, and attempting to work.

In ye olden days our littlest’s daycare would have a spot for Maggie as part of their families program. Unfortunately they lost half their building, which dropped their abilities to handle the summer load, and now we’re without.

She’s enrolled in a summer camp that looks to be significantly more fun than what I’m doing, but that doesn’t start until a week after Metro lets out because why would anything dealing with childcare be easy?

Monday was Memorial day, Tuesday her Gigi and Grandpa took her for six hours, Wednesday she spent  four hours with me at the office and then a couple of more hours working from home, Thursday Kim took off and they spent the day at a splash pad and dentist, Friday she’s colored every page in a coloring book twice at the office.

My office building has kids stashed every couple of offices. All the doors are closed, whether to keep children in or to keep noise out. The idea of a week long vacation at Memorial day doesn’t seem to carry through these days.

Not that I don’t enjoy spending some time with my kiddo, but she’s basically in a chair watching me make phone calls and try and figure out what’s bogging down our network. Not awesome sauce.

She’s colored a small comic book worth of stuff so far today. Not going to say it’s particularly engrossing reading but evidently there’s a wall one hits at about two hours of coloring and not running around where a 5yo looks solefully at you and asks “father, is this what my life as an adult is to be?”

Next week she’s going to start a series of camp activities I would have loved as a kid. This is day camp, not Lake Winnitoga, just a rec center we drop her off while we’re at work. They’ve also of course set the hours so it’s an hour and a half too short if someone wanted to say, have a full time job.

So we’ll be tag teaming it. Kim will go in to work early, I’ll follow an hour behind and drop Maggie and go in an hour late. Kim will leave half an hour early.

I mean day camp, it’s like a cool idea, but man, even the best ones the hours are not great.

Seems like with most families both parents having to work these days to make ends meet that the child care service industry would have stepped up the game since it last changed in 1994.