A New Era: Leaving the Kids at Home Alone

I can't recall if I've posted about this here before, but we have entered a new era in our family life, one in which we can leave the kids home alone. It's still relatively new for us, and not employed all that often, but it's been helpful. Like the hour tonight after I picked up both kids from school, and Hannah had a lot of homework, so she asked if she could skip the much-needed grocery run, and then I realized she could keep Max home with her too.

Not having to take both kids for an unplanned grocery run with no list after a long day of work, school, commuting, aftercare and play rehearsal? You don't have to ask me twice.

Well, that's not 100% true. I did miss their input and talking to them in the store. I *like* being around my kids, and they can be fairly helpful with shopping. But they needed the quiet time at home more than I needed them there with me.

I'm definitely not used to this new era. It didn't even occur to me that they would want to stay home, or that they even could. I'm sure there will be more and more times that they request to be left at home, and I'll be begging them to come run errands with me. But for now it just seems like a marked difference from a few short years ago, when leaving them home alone was out of the question, and so you'd think long and hard about whether a shopping trip was possible after a day like this one.

It seems that the one true constant in life is change.