When Your Kids' Schedules Are More Complex Than Your Own... What Then?

I often cringe when I hear one of the kids coughing through the monitors at night. In my head the questions begin: Is it the croup? Does one of them have the flu? Will Jake need a nebulizer treatment? Do they have fevers?

And last but not least: How many sick days do I have left?

Working full-time with two small kids is tough, but working full-time with two small kids when one or both of them is sick is even tougher. It means draining your sick time and begging and pleading with relatives (or in my case, my mother) to come babysit at a moment's notice.

What's most disturbing is that friends with older children keep warning me that it only gets worse. Once my boys get to school I'll have to contend with the school calendar, eight weeks off in the summer and countless holidays that aren't on my schedule. What will we do with them for a week in February and a week in April?

When parents only get two weeks of vacation time and about 10 sick days a year, how do you make it all work? To be honest, as much as I'm looking forward to the money we'll be saving once the boys get to public school, I'm terrified about the juggling act we'll have to master in order to keep our jobs.

A colleague of mine has found a way to make it work, but just barely: her seven year old son spends mornings with a neighbor, who walks him to school. When his kindergarten gets out at 1:30 he goes to an after school program until 4, and then to a babysitter until she or her husband gets home at 5:30. Good lord, what happens if one, two or three of those things don't work out on the same day??

My good friend is writing an article for the Boston Parent's Paper about this subject and is wondering how other moms handle it. Any advice? Any stories to share? Any words of wisdom? If you have anything you think either she or I could use, send me an email and I'll pass it on.