On a typical MLK day, the kids accompany their mom on the march in downtown Austin. My observations are usually made from the office, unfortunately. Yesterday, however, the weather was miserable, unfit for small marchers. So the little ones were imprisoned at the daycare, and Bubba, my oldest, is bunking in here at DadLabs.
Generally, I love having the kids here at the office. This should, technically, be a really kid friendly place ? we actually have a coloring table and some markers. Brad, my partner and co-host, has eaten all the dum-dums, however. They worked.
My main strategy for childcare was bringing in an old laptop and a stack of DVDs. Unfortunately, I grabbed the wrong power source out of the Snake Pit (aka the tangled mess of a drawer stuffed with cords of various kinds and vintages ? anybody got a hack for that?). Dead laptop. So I lost most of my morning buying a couple of shows, erasing and re-synching his iPod.
He was being a good sport, but basically bored as hell. He used the stapler about a thousand times, and dusted my touch-activated desk lamp ? which created a strobe effect that gave Daddy Troy a grand mal. It was such a cute gesture, I couldn't bring myself to tell him that nobody cleans up around here.
What is your secret for those occasions when you just have to bring the kid into work? What's the best way to keep little kids occupied and at least keep up the appearance that you are being productive?
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Comments: 11
Seriously, my grandfather had a small manufacturing plant with lots of dangerous machine tools like's Kimberly's story. They had mechanical drawings of the various parts they needed for the machines they made.
He would set me down at a drafting table with some drawings and tracing paper and told me he needed more copies of these drawings. I would spend hours carefully tracing over the drawings. He always said they were great and paid me 25 cents for every one.
She would bring a box of toys and put me in the conference room. In the box were said non electronic toys, usually legos, hotwheels and ..this one wouldn't work for you, but barbies.
Her boss at the time was like an uncle and would usually give me busy work to do like collating reports and such. I felt like I was helping and that made it special.