So I spent Monday & Tuesday home with Brianna, because she had a fever (and it turns out, strep & scarlet fever. Go us!). I was technically “working”, because that’s what we do in my office, but it was a challenge to keep Brianna entertained and feeling not-neglected while I tried to make icons and update UI sketches and what was I supposed to be doing again? Here’s what worked for us, to some extent:
- Disney movies. Thanks to my husband, who started collecting them before we got married, we have almost all the Disney full-length animated films on DVD and/or BluRay. So I let Brianna pick a movie, and then another, and then another… the first day, when she was really sick, she was mostly content to snuggle me and watch the movies while I worked around her.
- A pow-er stick. This was totally needed for my sweet, empathic child, who has more than her share of feelings on a good day, but on a sick day has even more. When the scary bad guys came out (some of the classic Disney stuff is pretty scary, yo) she pointed her stick at the TV and yelled POW! It made her feel better, and less scared. When the sad parts of the movies happened, she snuggled me even more, and might have shed a tear or two because it was so sad.
- Scissors and magazines. Y’all, I have way too many magazines. Food magazines and family magazines and parenting magazines – lots of pretty pictures! So when Brianna wanted to do “homework” at the table? I busted out the magazine stash and scissors, and sent her on a scavenger hunt. “Can you find five things that start with B? How about three red things?” Much fun was had cutting, and the magazines were thrown away after (double win).
- Bubbles. I opened the back door, and sent Brianna into the yard with a bottle of bubble solution. When that ran out, I made her more using dish soap and water. She was entertained for at least an hour – and the weather was nice enough that other than letting every bug in the county into the house, it wasn’t a problem for me to leave the door open and work at the kitchen table, where I could both see and hear her, and she could run in and out at will.
- Mommy’s helper. Brianna “helped” me do a bunch of stuff. Including looking for icons on a page, trying to draw something on the computer, and various chores around the house (but nothing involving touching clean laundry or clean dishes, because yikes! germs). She felt good about helping, and I was patient enough to realize that work done slowly and not-perfectly was better than no work at all
- Dry erase markers. Brianna loves them, and loves erasing them. So we played with the white board a fair amount. I have a ton of markers I got free/cheap when school started, so she had many colors to choose from.
- No dress code. Brianna has now declared that she loves being sick, because it means she doesn’t have to wear pants. True story. Normally, once the kids are dressed I make sure they stay that way (other than shoes and socks) – but since we were home sick, I relaxed the rules. Being three, and not having a great sense of social norms yet, Brianna was very content to run around in a t-shirt and underwear. But was super-sad to have to wear pants today, to go back to school.
- Snuggles. Yep, this is most of what we did. I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped, work-wise, but we made the best of our couple of days at home, and spent a lot of time snuggling. Hopefully, that’s what she’ll remember
You can find more Works For Me Wednesday post over at We Are THAT Family.