Mid-Winter Vacation

My boys’ school is letting out tomorrow for six days straight. Let me tell you, the title is such a misnomer. It should be called Mid-Winter House-Wrecking or Stuck-At-Home-With-Cabin-Fever. Or perhaps, Chuck-E-Cheese Week. I know there are mothers out there who look forward to spending time with their kids when they are off from school, but I’ll be honest with you. I dread all those days ‘off’.

My husband takes the car to work so if I want to go anywhere with the boys, it means schlepping by bus or train. Fortunately for the youngsters, they are very excited at the prospect of riding the train that we could probably just stay on the train and then ride back on the opposite track and they would think we went on a really cool trip!

As if I have nothing to do all day besides ride trains…

I guess it will have to be a week where I go on a Pesach-cleaning hiatus. How can I clean when the kids are making messes? We all know that old adage about shoveling while it’s still snowing, after all.

I tried to get some toys in the house that would keep Junior and his brother occupied. They each have their own Nintendo DS. (The first was an afikomen gift, the second was a pre-owned flea market bargain.) You would think that would keep them somewhat busy. But if it doesn’t, I ordered a Wii console with the gift card bought via my credit card points. (It pays to pay tuition with plastic. The points really add up!) It came with one game and one controller. I ordered another game online that came with a bonus controller, so the kids should be able to play together at the same time, but the packer messed up and sent me the wrong (useless) item. Now we still have only one controller, an impending ‘vacation’ and two boys. I guess they can also play with Lego, but I’m afraid that none of this will keep them occupied long enough for me to make much Pesach-cleaning progress.

However, there is one other thing they love to do. My boys are thrilled to gain control of soap, spray bottles and shmattas and ‘clean’. The older one is actually not bad with a scrubber brush. Maybe I’ll have them wash some walls or something. That will help with the Pesach-cleaning and with keeping them entertained at the same time!

This past Succos, I bumped into an ol’ friend of mine and asked her how she spent her Chol Hamoed. She admitted she didn’t really go much of anywhere, but one day she went into her kids’ room and completely organized everything in it. She felt so good once this was done AND it kept her children busy! (When I mentioned this to my husband, whose idea of Chol Hamoed is FUN, MORE FUN, and OUTINGS, he grimaced.)

Maybe the next room on my Pesach-cleaning campaign should be the kids’ room.

Maybe it’s actually not a bad idea to start this activity during their lengthy mid-winter break.