How to be a super-dad #2 (First day)

So it is the first day I am alone with my kid. It is 10 A.M. We are up and ready to start our day. So I have so many things scrolling around in my head. I need to feed him, get him clean, play with him and so on. Well, I just have to start with something. I have seen that my beloved wife starts every morning with diaper change and afterwards we have some breakfast.

He is 9 months old, and the first thing I have to do is change his diaper. Laugh out loud, this was some nice experience. I have done all those things before, and I thought, since I am experienced in those things, it will be very easy for me. Oh, I was wrong! If you do it while your wife is around, it is different. She can help you, by saying what to do or, by saying that you have to do this first and then the next step, But now I have to think of all the steps on my own.

So I put him on the changing table, undressed him and then, I started to take the diaper off. Oh, the smell was something incredible! :) I have to admit, when your child starts to eat normal food, not just mommy's milk, it gets very smelly. But in a few days you get used to it, so it will not be such a problem. It will become routine.

I finished cleaning him up, and it was time for breakfast. Here, I encountered my first problem. When you are a full-time dad you have to organize the day differently than you did before. This is very good advice which no one gave me. To make food for a kid you should start preparing it before you change and clean him up. Since I didn’t do that, my kid had to wait for me to make him breakfast, and he was not very happy about it, so he started to scream and cry.

I made him some ground vegetables and turkey. I don’t like the baby food you get in glass jars. The taste is terrible, plus it is much cheaper and healthier to make your own. And if you do it correctly, it will not take a lot of time. I will write a post about how we do that. It takes less than 2 hours a week for us to prepare everything and cook it.

So now i was making food for my kid, while he was screaming, because he was hungry. I was so stressed, because I wanted to do everything correctly and I put a lot of pressure on myself. But in 20 minutes the food was ready and we had our first breakfast. Oh, I was very proud of myself as I did this on my own. How the heck do moms do it? I was already tired and it was only the beginning of the day.

It was time for some daddy-son playtime. So now I met the second problem of the day. I found out playing is not what I imagined. Laugh out loud again, because this day was getting more and more interesting. I've seen my wife playing with the kid and it looked so easy. Give him some toys and just sit near him. I was wrong here also :) Some toys are his favorite, but he doesn't like to play with others. And you can't just sit near him and do nothing; you have to play with him, like really do stuff with him.

You may ask, what's so hard about playing? Well, when you are grown up, you like different things. You see the world differently, and you organize your time differently. Your child sees the world differently. He has fun and he doesn’t think he is wasting time on something useless. So he can play with something for a couple of hours, but for me it was very hard, as I was not used to this.

Now it was time for a nap. We had another meal, and while he was eating he fell asleep. Oh, it was so delightful. Now I had like 2 hours for myself. And this was my third mistake of the day. Really, I RESPECT full-time moms. They do all this, plus, the cleaning and cooking. I had to make food for myself because now I had time to eat my breakfast, and it was like 3 PM. I decided this would be a day to skip food :D. I didn’t have much energy to cook, so I took a power-nap.

We are lucky to have a baby who sleeps well. He slept for 3 hours and then my wife was home. This was a very happy moment, as I didn’t mess up much, and now I have help from her. I can't walk much these days, so my beloved wife did the walking and I had like 2 more hours for myself.

So this was a very interesting experience for me. I thought there would be no problems, but in reality it was very hard. In the evening my kid played some more, but this time it was with my wife. And now I could say my first day was over. Kurt and I survived this day, but I knew there are 4 more days like it to go, and I had to change my way of thinking. I had to think differently, to make it easier for myself and the kid.

To be continued….

Just click on link below to read first part of this blog:

How to be a super-dad #1 (introduction)