How Do You Create a 'Stay-cation' for Your Family?

Patch invites you and your friends to help build a community of support for mothers and their families right here in Barrington.

Each week Moms Talk, members of our Moms Council and other smart moms will take your questions, offer some insight and share possible solutions. 

Moms Talk also will be a place to drop in for a chat about the latest parenting hot-button issue. So join the conversation today with two Moms Council members, children's author and soon to be mother of three, Anika Denise, and Amy Ames, Patch's Take It From a Mom columnist, and Barrington mom Catherine Winchild.

Question:

It's vacation week, if haven't jetted off to a warm destination, how are you creating a "stay-cation" for yourself and your children? 

Answer: Anika Denise

My tips for a great stay-cation:
#1:  Never actually use the word "stay-cation."  Apparently, I used the term too liberally when it first became fashionable and now my kids translate it to mean: "All the lame stuff mom pretends is just as cool as going to Disney or skiing in Tahoe."
#2: Have at least one "Pajama Day" where you stay in your PJs, make pancakes, bake brownies, rent a bunch of great movies and eat popcorn.
#3: Pajama day should be one day only—by day two it loses its charm.
#4: Pick a destination (within driving distance) that you've never visited and GO!  (e.g. The Eric Carle Museum, Battleship Cove, Hayden Planetarium.)
#5: Embrace the cold.  Yep, it's February in New England and instead of engaging in the futility of wishing it wasn't—or that you were all in Aruba—do fun stuff you can't in July, like a day at Yawgoo, ice skating, or even reading a chapter book aloud in front of the fire.  

Answer: Amy Ames

The best part about a "stay-cation" is that you don't have to wake up and deal with "rush hour" in the mornings.

Rush hour in my house is the five of us scrambling about the house looking for items: misplaced sneakers, yesterday's lunchbox or today's reading log that needs to go in the folder before the bus arrives.  

These past few days we've been sleeping in and everyone has been waking up by their own internal alarm clocks.  Believe me, it's still early, but just not as rushed.

Its been a great way to relax into the day, and my kids have seemed calmer. At least for the first few hours!

Answers: Catherine Winchild

I find the best way to create a vacation at home is to set up the expectation with my children that we don't--as a rule--jet off. Any. Where. I like to tell them tales of being stuck on winter runways. For 4 hours. IN CANADA. That usually scares them off wanting any kind of airport travel until mid-July.

My children aren't allowed to watch television during the school week, so watching two consecutive episodes of "Mythbusters," starting at 8 a.m., is a real treat in these parts. (PARENTAL WARNING: Feed child(ren) healthy, mid-episode snacks so as to avoid crazy, blood-sugar-plummeting, post-TV violence).

When the kids get a little nutty inside the house and the weather is frigid and windy, I like to use this method to force them outside:

ME: "You guys have crazy energy. You need to go outside. NOW!"
THEM (in unison): "NO!!!! It's freezing outside! We can't go out there."
ME: "Outside or I start throwing away special toys." (I like to go directly to threatening, because reasoning with children about weather I myself would never go out in doesn't work.)
THEM: "Like, which toys?"
ME (Losing cred): "Uh, The Most Special Ones!"
THEM: "Like our stuffed animals?"
ME (Ha ha! Suckahs!): "Exactly!"
THEM: "Okay, okay! We're going! How long do we have to stay out?"
And so it goes...

No matter how desperate I am for an activity, I never, ever, never set up any messy craft projects. Fifteen minutes to set it all up, 20 minutes to fight with them about cleaning it up, five minutes to pull from the garbage all the recyclables that they've mistakenly thrown away, just for an activity that takes 10 minutes to complete, a full day to dry and a seeming lifetime to busy up my fridge? No thank you!

Instead, I like to bring them to a toy store and pretend it's a museum, as in, "We're JUST LOOKING. NO TOUCH!" This can easily kill a good hour or so without a single monetary expenditure. Or a hideous collage on my fridge for the next 3 months. Just kidding!

Probably my Best School Vacation Trick ever is to say, "No," to the arcade every single day until, at long last, I say, "Yes," and they know that Life Is Good and that the poor kids traveling in Mexico this week don't even "have arcades."

When all else fails, I encourage my kids to buddy up to someone with known "jetting off"  plans and see if they get themselves invited along for the next school vacation.