Evolved08gsr's Daddy Daycare Week - Day 1 (Last Night, This Morning)
I survived the First of Four Nights where I am without my Wonderful Wife leading the Parenting Charge.
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The first night was the "easy part". So, we left the house to drop my wife off at the airport around 1 PM. Since we felt bad about our son spending over an hour alone in a car seat in the back of the car, my wife sat in the back seat with him on the ride to the airport. Everything went well on the ride to the airport, we all said our goodbyes, and away I went back home.
I was mentally prepared for the remainder of the day. I would arrive home around 2 PM, give my son a bottle and some "adult food", then tire him out with some play time followed by a short nap around 3 PM.. If only that was how the day went..
I had to make a short stop for gas on my way home, and the gas station had a bit of a line to wait for an open fuel pump. No problem, I can keep my son busy in the car with toys and funny faces! Everything was going fine until about 20 minutes before we would get home .. I sneezed very loudly, and scared him!
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Being only 11 months old, he hasn't reached an understanding that Daddy's loud sneezes are OK. He started crying and no matter of my consoling helped, so I stopped talking with him -- he started calming down, but not completely .. my last option was to turn on the radio -- he stopped!
The problem with this tactic is that my son likes to fall asleep in the car. With me no longer talking with him, and the sun gently beating on him in the Air-Conditioned car, I saw him starting to nod off. At this point, I'm trying to do everything to keep him awake (we're less than 10 minutes from home).. but once he makes up his mind about sleeping, there's not much you can do to keep him awake from the driver's seat while driving.
When we arrived home, I was torn between trying to keep him asleep or waking him up. My first thought was to "let a sleeping baby sleep", so I tried using my Super-Dad Skills to get him out of the car seat without waking him up. In the past, I had been very successful with this move!, but this time he woke up immediately.
From this point on, the afternoon was set up for failure. He ate lunch, played, then eventually got cranky (he didn't have a very long nap in the morning either). When I tried to put him down to nap, he didn't want to stay down. I had an impossible situation to deal with .. it was getting too late for him to take a nap if I wanted him to go to sleep at a normal bed-time, so he was not going to get an afternoon nap...
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If you have children, or have babysat them, I'm sure you understand the repercussions of a child not getting a nap when they are used to having a nap. The entire afternoon from 4 PM onward was me dealing with my very unhappy and over-tired son. He was not thrilled about eating dinner. When he began refusing to eat foods that he loves to eat, I knew that he was ready to just go to bed.
I finished his dinner off with another bottle, and started on his bedtime routine. We changed him into a new diaper for bed, put on his pajamas, and before I was able to read him a book to finish off the routine, he was starting to nod off (and acting a bit cranky as I was saying we were going to read a book). So, I shorted the routine, gave him his bedtime snuggle buddy and put him in his crib -- he passed out shortly after I left the room (5:45 PM).
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He sleeps so well (my wife and I are truly blessed in this area), so I didn't need to respond to him until he woke up this morning. I planned on preparing most of his meals for the next day in the morning (when I sent him to daycare), so I set my alarm for 15 minutes before he usually wakes up. This would give me time to brew a pot of coffee for the day, get dressed, and start preparing for his morning routine.
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He slept a little later than usual, so I had more time to prepare for him waking up. I did NOT use that time wisely. I was busy trying to figure out what the heck food I was going to send with him to daycare?! By the time he woke up, I hadn't gotten myself dressed yet, I didn't have his food ready for the day (but at least I had his bottles ready, so that's something good, right?!).
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Making a long story short, I fed him a bunch of fruit for breakfast. I figured that I could kill 2 birds with 1 stone by cutting up the fruit that he was eating for breakfast, and put the extra fruit in his containers for daycare (brilliant, right!?)! The only problem was that he was apparently very hungry (Maybe because he had such a small dinner? Duh, I should have seen that coming!).
I needed to drop him off to daycare by 9 AM, and it was 8:15 AM and he was still asking for more food! He finally seemed to be satisfied with the amount of food he ate, I quickly scrambled to get the rest of his food for the day together, got him secured in his car seat, and drove off for daycare by 8:30 AM!
I was so proud, until as I was running through the list of things to bring to daycare, I realized that I forgot to put his "extra" food in the bag. A quick U-Turn, hastily picking 2 food pouches from the pantry, 30 seconds total in-and-out of the house .. Phew! We arrived safely at daycare by 8:45 AM!
The moment I dropped him off I felt so relieved for my success, followed by overwhelming sadness that I couldn't spend the full day with my boy! This is a typical sensation every time my wife and/or I drop him off at daycare, except I don't usually get the same relief feeling since this is the first time that I've done all of the parenting work by myself.
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Now I'm anxiously waiting for when I can pick him up and go through our nightly routine again!
If you want to read more, please take a look at some of my other posts:
- All of my Posts!
- Evolved08gsr's SteemSQL Analysis - Post #001 - Working to Identify and Eradicate Spam Accounts
- Evolved08gsr's Steemit Navigation Tips
- Evolved08gsr's Travel in NYC - Rooftop Views
- Steemit Goal(s) for this week and beyond!
- Evolved08gsr's Dabbling into Cryptocurrencies
- Evolved08gsr's Travel - Roaming Photos in NYC
- Evolved08gsr's Weekend Photography
- The True Minnow Challenge