Someone needs to watch him constantly. We’ve baby-proofed a section of the basement but someone needs to be there with him, and with four other children, the baby-proofing is hard to keep perfect (I found random pieces of paper in there yesterday that he naturally tried to eat). Constant vigilance does not make for a relaxing weekend. But five kids in, this stage is not a surprise. So we’re back to the Official Toddler Hand-off around here to ensure that both parents get their downtime.

Sunday in particular we wound up with nothing formal on the calendar. Another snowstorm dropped at least six inches during the morning and early afternoon, and so the kids’ activities were canceled. My husband and I decided to trade off every 90 minutes around nap time. Like alarms set and everything.

I can attest that 90 minutes spent watching a toddler definitely feels longer than 90 minutes not spent watching a toddler. However, 90 minutes also doesn’t feel endless like a full day stuck at home can. I got a treadmill run in, finished my 1000-piece puzzle, did Legos with the 11-year-old, took some of the big kids sledding, and, with the addition of nap time, helped the 9-year-old clean off the two craft tables in the basement to make them usable.

If it had been possible to go anywhere, then a longer window might have made more sense. One party might do the morning, one party might cover post-nap to bedtime (in a one-nap scenario, which is where we’ll be in a month or two). But for a snowy day, the official 90-minute hand-off worked pretty well. So we’ll probably be repeating it until things warm up around here.

Do you do weekend trade-offs?

In other news: This post reminds me, again, that I am in awe of single parents.

In other other news: Amazon had a one-day sale on the ebook version of 168 Hours over the weekend (I sent a blast out to my weekend newsletter list about it Saturday when it happened). It was so fun to see a book that came out eleven years ago climb up the Kindle ranks. One of my goals for the year has been to sell my “back catalog” as the publishing industry calls it. Between the Kindle sale, Drew Barrymore holding up a copy of I Know How She Does It on air, and a large virtual book club reading All the Money in the World, I’ve now seen bumps for three titles. Now I just need a celebrity to mention Juliet’s School of Possibilities or Off the Clock…

Photo: Intrigued, but unsure about the snow thing…