My four year old is on break from preschool right now. Which is awesome. Really. I love being with her all day. She’s fun and clever and interesting.
Except when she’s crazy and impossible and wants to climb all over me while I’m holding the baby and wants to nurse more often than he does and wants to play with all her friends who are of course not available.
Because they’re in school.
I absolutely love her preschool, and she does too, but right now I hate the fact that they are on a different schedule than the rest of our county. I don’t know what the reason was behind their logic — and I’m sure it was good — but all I know is my daughter is on break and almost none of her friends are. Most of her friends are starting public pre-K this year, which means they started school yesterday. Pretty much the only kids her age that we could play with are her friends her age who are also staying at her preschool for another year. Of whom there are two.
Friday was the last day of school, and on Saturday I texted the parents of both her friends asking when we could set up playdates. Because Anastasia woke up saying she missed them. The first day of vacation.
That’s when I knew it was going to be a long three weeks.
And I seriously don’t know what parents do with a whole summer. If you just did that, my heart goes out to you. I could not be more in favor of year-round school right now.
I love the idea of homeschooling. Or better yet, unschooling. But the truth is that preschool is great for my kid. She thrives on being around peers and having a routine and having adults in her life who aren’t her parents. I thrive on it too. But now I have three weeks of break, which really isn’t long and I should be grateful. And I am. I am also discovering everything that you shouldn’t do when you have a young child who is usually in school but is currently on break.
For example.
1. Renovate your house. Seriously? What were we thinking? I guess we were thinking that we really wanted to fix our fireplace, which was installed incorrectly and was not usable as it was, and plus we had this really cool energy efficient wood stove that we’ve been wanting to install for years. We definitely didn’t plan to be doing this renovation when school let out. But being stuck out of the house all day during break — without anywhere specific to go — was not the brightest idea. We can’t stay in the house while it’s being worked on, because my daughter will try to help the contractors as they lay the hearth, which seems really sweet as an idea but doesn’t turn out great in practice.
Luckily, there’s a wonderful new kid-friendly coffee shop I’ve discovered. And when I say “discovered,” what I really mean is, “moved in.” Come check it out. Yes, I’m here now. I’ve been here constantly the past few days. I will probably be here for the next three weeks. Don’t worry, I’m buying lots of coffee.
2. Work. I guess whether you can work with kids around depends on what your work is. If your work involves anything that a preschooler shouldn’t help with — like, say, writing, just for example — then you shouldn’t try to do it while your child is out of school. Because she will want to help, which means typing your keyboard while you are trying to and hitting your caps lock key and closing your computer and opening it again and somehow opening another program like Photoshop or Evernote. You will not get much work done.
3. Blog. See above. Don’t blog when your kid is on vacation. Just don’t.
So if you don’t hear from me much over the next few weeks, that’s why. I didn’t really plan for an absence because, well, I didn’t realize we were going to have three weeks of vacation until last Thursday, when I casually asked the director of the preschool when we were starting back up again. So if you don’t hear from me for a while — or even until after Labor Day — now you know why.