Monkey House

Today was day to yesterday’s night.

One exception to an otherwise great day: Cole woke mommy up at 5:00am. She got up, humoured him, played with him, got ready for work, and put him down for his first nap of the day at 7:00am.

He sometimes doesn’t even get up until nearly 9:00am.

So at 7:30am he wakes me up. I’m initially thinking (after looking at the clock), “awesome! I’m up for that coffee/breakfast thing I mentioned yesterday!” Uh, except no. I let him raise his voice a bit, thinking mommy would be to the rescue, and not knowing she had already left for work. Zombie-like, I rise to my feet, collect my protesting son, and walk downstairs. No mommy. Look outside at the driveway… no car. WTH? No car? AT 7:30am?

Then I spot her note, explaining why sleep time is off, and giving me very nice directions for finishing the laundry.

But wait… if that was his first nap… is my day’s game plan screwed?
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So, somewhat as per my predictions, here’s how the day went. The details are excessive, and possibly only interesting if you can visualize me with Cole. But this is really more for my wife and Cole’s grandparents than anyone else, so read at your own peril:

Woke up at 8:30. Must wake up at 7:30 from now on. Here’s why: I’m incapable of making coffee and eating cereal by the time Cole is unhappy with his current activity (whatever that happens to be at the time.. mat, exersaucer, whatever). He gets unhappy that quickly. I thought to myself, “meh, he can sob a little bit while I eat. A guy’s gotta eat.” But that didn’t work out so well for me. I *did* manage to grab a bowl of cereal (ate with one hand at the counter, Cole in the other arm) but it wasn’t worth it. I’d rather wake up earlier and share breakfast with my wife.

Suffice it to say, from 8:30 – 9:00 I juggled Cole in one arm while trying to get my day started. He wasn’t uncooperative, but I knew he was in the mood to wander and look out the window, not to be on his mat or in some other independence-granting device.

But at 9:00 the shit hit the fan. Not literally. Thankfully.
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So, I’ve needed an excuse to just ramble a bit here. And my excuse will be a journal of my short (2-month) paternity leave. Oh sure, there’s tonnes of other stuff in the backlog (baby’s first Christmas!) but those things require video and/or photo editing, and my puter is running on 1GB of 333Mhz RAM for about a week… not in the mood to do anything too intensive with the machine until it’s up to speed. Instead, I will jump right into posting about my parental leave… no pics necessary, though I’m sure there will be some of those as well…

So, Day One is coming up. The plan? Don’t really have one yet. I think it will be:

1. wake up as Mama goes off to her first day back at the lab
2. Go through some of his usual diversions depending on what he’s in the mood for:
   1. practice sitting/crawling
   2. read book(s)
   3. jolly jumper
   4. mat time
3. Try to get him down for a nap. As far as I know, he usually has boobies which lead into naps. I do not have boobies. Bottle and reclining MIGHT do it, but it might now. This might be a tough stretch of walking around the main floor with a carrier
4. Fire up some laundry (or, nap with little guy if I’m bazaughsted)
5. Meet mommy for lunch
6. Go to the dog park
7. Swing past Future Shop
8. Nap #2, which may involve more playing by ear, figuring out how to get him to go down for some sleep
9. Exersaucer, laundry, pray mommy comes home soon
10. Start supper?

I’m under no illusion… my stay-at-home period will likely be easier than Alie’s was. The hard part will be establishing new routines, figuring out how to get him to nap, and generally rolling with the inevitable moments when I can’t figure out how to keep him happy.

But I’m looking forward to it nonetheless. Many dads I know are from the generation before me, or couldn’t take the time off work. 9 time out of 10 they say they wish they had taken more than a few days off. I may not be taking 35 weeks, but a solid 8 weeks is going to be unforgettable one way or another.

First off,

Since I came so dangerously close to missing saying “Happy Birthday” to my mom (I actually DID miss it by 5 minutes; called and woke her up at about 12:05am, which was a dubious choice (she may have valued her sleep more than a call from me!)) I figured I’d take a minute to do that here. So, Happy Birthday Mom!

My mom is pretty much the greatest mom anyone ever had. I would back that up with Scientific research, but anyone who meets her would realize there’s no real need. And as awesome a mom as she is, she’s an even awesomer grandmother (sorry, “grammy”). Which creates this feedback loop in which her awesomeness as a grammy reinforces her awesomeness to me as a mom, which reinforces her awesomeness as a grammy, which reinforces…

So thanks mom, we love you!

The Tree

There is a Christmas tree unfurling in our living room right now (no, not a sad one like the picture to the left; a real 6.5-foot bushy tree… more about the sad tree in just a moment). It will get decorated tomorrow. This might be a bit close to Christmas for some people, but for me Read the rest of this entry »

Rogers Cable can suck my <expletive>.

We get (got?) all our home connectivity services through Rogers. This means 2 cell phones, 1 Digital Cable, 1 “Express” Cable Internet (10Mbps), and 1 home phone. We are trying to ditch Rogers because what they’re actually sucking is our money. Out of us. Or our bank accounts. Which REALLY sucks.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the most recent letter we got from them. “Most Recent” because it is the second such letter. The first one came a year ago, saying (paraphrased), “If you would like to continue to receive your Better Choice Bundle discount, you need to commit to 2 years.” (I remember them saying 3, but Rogers insists it has always been only 2, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt). On the phone and through no fewer than 3 conversations, I essentially told them, “Piss off. No, sir, I will brook this a moment longer, sir.” Which was a lie, because they held onto me for another year when someone stepped up and said, “We’ll grandfather your existing arrangement for another year.”

But this year, as they hinted, we got another letter saying the same thing. “If we do not receive a commitment by October XX, you will no longer receive your discount.”

What.

The.

F***.
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