Summer Wrap Up

Summer break 2015 has come to a close.  School starts on Monday.  Claire and I were reflecting that summer break is such a strange amount of time, 11 weeks.  It is just enough time to get settled into a routine and then get jarred out of that routine again when school starts back up.  It’s too long and too short at the same time.

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Fun ideas, yes. But most were not pursued.

This year we went with a full-time summer nanny.  With both Claire and Molly off of school, and a lack of enthusiasm for summer camps from Claire, a summer nanny made more sense than a bunch of camps times two different kids.  So the girls hung out with Anna most of the day, and our after-school nanny Sarah took over for the 3-6 pm shift, although there was a to of adjusting week by week.

The girls love to just hang out at home and spent most of their days doing just that.  Claire and Molly have a really good thing going and can play with each other for hours both inside and outside in the rain.  They mostly play with MLP and LPS (My Little Ponies and Littlest Pet Shop), making up story after story.  They often record their stories on Claire’s iPad, which she bough with her youtube funds.  They also watch some TV and youtube, and work on projects.  Molly occasionally gets out the Legos or Marble Run, and Claire makes miniatures or shoots some video footage of her own.  Claire did manage to get a couple of videos done, including this one that she worked really hard on.  The girls also spent many, many afternoons at the public pool.  Sadly, most of Claire’s friends were out of town for much of the summer.

This girls did have other big plans for the summer and made a poster full of fun ideas to do.  However, they didn’t make much progress on the ideas.  They only tackled a couple of them.  They seemed to settle into a summer rut and didn’t really expand beyond their comfortably routine after a while.  Well, that is summer, I guess.  It will be good for them to get back into the school routine.

 

Nanny Time

This time of year is challenging for child care.  Claire and Molly are still on summer break, but our summer nanny is done for the summer and back at college.  So the kids are left with “random nannies” from a service plus our reliable afternoon nanny, Sarah.  We had two morning-of nanny cancellations this week to make things even more complicated.

This week’s nannies were Nicole, Kristen, Ashley, Mayli, and Sarah.

Claire and Molly don’t seem to mind having a different person coming to take care of them every day.  My hat is off to them for their openness and adaptability.