Last weekend my wife was away at a women’s retreat, leaving me with the girls for two days. We had a great weekend – exhausting with only one parent, yes, but a ton of fun. It was a foretaste, so to speak, of the feast that is to come this summer when Daddy Daycare comes to our house. My CPE Residency ends on May 31, and I will be unemployed. After a week off, I will take our girls out of daycare to care for them myself – no sense in paying for daycare when I’m unemployed for the summer!
And so I thought I was going to be clever and post a picture from the 2003 movie Daddy Daycare with Eddie Murphy. But when I put "Daddy Daycare" into Google image search, the sixth image that appears was this:
The caption on this picture reads, "Like most men, Cash insists he just comes to Hooters for the wings." See the original pic, caption and article over at The Poop: The Chronicle’s Baby Blog.
The girls and I will not be visiting Hooters this summer.
But as I’m only a month away from the end of my CPE program, I’ve been playing around in my head with my Daddy Daycare routine –
- Wake up, watch some cartoons on PBS
- Eat breakfast & get dressed
- Turn off TV
- thinking of a daily routine to turn the TV toward wall – the TV stand is on wheels – or cover TV with a blanket. We will not watch TV all day during Daddy Daycare!
- Go outside
- Take a walk outside, or
- a trip to the local playground (regrettably not in walking distance),or
- a trip to a local county park that has a lake and paved walking/strolling trails in the woods.
- Rain option: trip to library or local mall where that has a wonderful Carousel, a big fountain, and lots of hallways to run through.
- Snack – either at park or at home.
- Arts & Crafts
- Lunch
- Naptime
- Snack, inside play, read stories
- Outside play
- Dinner!
Other options: Though one of the goals is to save money, I’m going to look into some programs at the local YMCA. Also, the borough offers a cheap or free summer recreation/arts & crafts program that may be fun for my three year-old.
Any ideas or advice from Dads or Moms who’ve been there, done that? Thanks!
The Lutheran Zephyr 
Is your church going to do a VBS this summer? Or sometimes I have families who bounce from VBS to VBS hitting a bunch of different churches. It is always a fun thing to do if your girls are old enough (some do have nursery stuff too). Always a good (cheap) thing to look into.
There are several good arts and crafts preschool books that I could recommend if you need.
This is so great, Chris! We have a bunch of links bookmarked on our laptop about stay-at-home fatherhood (since that’s our plan) – I’ll look them up for you.
I’m sure you know the wisdom of this far more than I do, since you’re a parent and all, but kids really thrive on routine so I think it’s good to build that in to daily care. I worked for two summers at a preschool and we did things like Macaroni Mondays and Water Wednesdays – the kids counted down on a wall calendar and really looked forward to the predictable routines. Water Wednesdays were especially fun – we had an inflatable kiddie pool or just let them run through the sprinklers. I won’t go into what chaos ensued getting 40 4-year-olds in and out of their swimsuits… but they had fun. Water play is definitely a good, cheap summer activity!
You probably know this too, but there are some great activity books in the Firelight series – I stocked up on all of ’em for future use! I liked the Art, Storytelling, and Music ones the best.
You’re going to have a great summer!