Recently, my husband and I came to a thoroughly unsurprising realization. To get through the summer, we would need some childcare help. After all, the past 10 weeks have been, um, illuminating, and I’m wildly impressed with our ability to tend to our two kids, our careers and our home without anybody getting fired or ingesting sunscreen. (OK, fine, the latter happened just once.) But as we look toward summer, with no school, no camp, demanding jobs and nothing but our three window A/Cs to cool us, we just…can’t.
So, after reading one thousand articles about the spread of viral droplets and CDC guidelines for school reopenings, I reached out to a daycare teacher I know to see if she’d be willing to put together some sort of home camp for my children. Everybody would be outside and masked as much as possible and we’d all be very honest about exposure risks and comfort level.
The good news? She said yes! The bad news? As I went to bed that night, giddy with thoughts of not having to tend to somebody’s potty trips, snack requests and jellyfish drawings 24/7, my mind started to spiral.