I’ve teased any number of my friends and family about the lack of wisdom of the course they’ve charted for themselves.  Namely… having more kids than they can chase at the same time.

And even sometimes, having two is more than we can handle.

Most of the time, we try to go by the theory of divide and conquer – either we each take a child and occasionally swap to even out the wear-and-tear, or one of us takes both of them for short periods of time so the other can get something more important done, like cooking or our individual “me” time.

Our schedule’s arranged specifically to handle this tactic – I come home early on Tuesdays and watch R so the wife can take the Monster to his speech and occupational therapy, and I zip over to his school on Thursdays to retrieve him for gymnastics.  Most of the rest of the time, we’re both with the kids together (or it runs into weird things like my business trip last week, where someone’s stuck with the kids for lack of backup).

And this theory’s great until you run into something unexpected happening to jar the whole thing.  On Sunday, my car died.  This wouldn’t be such a big problem… except for how the wife needs to still get around, and how mass transit isn’t really an option in our neighborhood, so I can’t have her car with me at the office.  (I could probably make it work if I had to.  I think the bus runs near our house and goes down to the light rail station – just not sure about the return trip.)  I was able to work from home yesterday, which freed her up to actually run some errands without R, but today was partially dedicated to the car search and then to my getting to the office for some meetings.  And while I had to be home early today, I couldn’t take the car, since that’d have stranded her at the house.

Tomorrow’s going to be wholly dedicated to finding a new car, since this just can’t continue, or we’ll have to rent a car for a few days to cover us.  It’s just not really tenable for us to be without two cars if we’re going to keep everything moving forward with both kids and my work.

I do wonder what the Monster will think, if anything, when I finally do get a different car permanently.  I’ve had the former car since before he was born…