I know that, like a lot of other parents in our boat, we’re dealing with what to do with the Monster while the schools are closed for a week and a half.

When I was a child, I used to look forward to holiday break – it was the first of a whole span of week-long interruptions in the school schedule that, at least from that point forward, I could expect every six-or-so weeks.  Now… it’s more dread about what to do with the kids while they’re both at home.

So, since I have little reason to actually “take off” this week – I’m not celebrating Christmas, after all – I had been starting to plan to work from home for a good portion of the week so as not to strand my wife with both kids.  While I do prefer to have my meetings in-person with my coworkers, there’s that fact that having both R and the Monster around would drive her crazy, and I’m not willing to put her through that.

And then the JCC let her know that there’s some funding for a 1-on-1 aide to shadow the Monster at their K-5 gap-week program.  Huzzah.  So as I mentioned on Twitter, he’s off to the JCC for sports, for games, for music and for swimming all week (except for the Wednesdays, since those are taken up with other things), and things are “somewhat” normal for the interim.  Plus, with swimming being one of his favorite activities, it was easy to get him geared up to go this morning since he had that to look forward to.

Now, I don’t know how this is going to affect his progress at school, obviously – he’s not getting his speech therapy or his OT there, obviously, since they’re closed – but hopefully, between everything else, this should keep him busy enough and socializing enough that it at least keeps him busy and from back-sliding…