Smooth sailing for the grandparents!
Posted in Tips on August 30, 2010
For Monday Dreaming, I am dreaming of a smooth adventure for the grandparents when they come to watch my kids for a week. Daddy J and I are going out of town and the grandparents will be watching the kids. I know they will be in good, loving hands but we have never traveled away from the kids for more than a weekend and they are never staying in our house when we go away. There are so many things you have to remember to tell them about your daily routine. Things that you automatically think of like what time the bus picks up or when the sports activity begins but there are also things that I didn’t think of right away like directions to the school should they need them or what time the trash gets picked up.
I was very surprised at how little I found during a quick search of the Internet. I was looking for some templates to fill out or a checklist of information and couldn’t find a single thing. I did ask on Twitter and got back some great responses that will help me out. Over the next week or two, I am going to try and devise a few worksheets that I hope to put on the site so you can download them for the next time you go out of town without your kids.
Stay tuned!
I find it helpful to mentally break down every day as to what usually happens (like trash and recycling, etc), and I have a notebook in my kitchen with all sorts of good info- the house’s address, the neighbors’ names and numbers as well as nearby friends, school phone numbers, doctors, even out-of-state grandparents’s info. That way if a babysitter sees a number on caller ID from Indiana, she knows it’s probably my parents. Another thing is directions to the house from nearby major intersections, esp if it is a hard to find place. flylady.net has a good list for her control journal.
Another list is of all the numbers of banks and credit card companies- if you wallet gets stolen or lost, you can call home and get all the numbers you need to call ASAP.
Don’t forget a medical power of attorney. They advise making them for 12 months at a time, and they come in handy!