Day 27 – The Day We Walked The Dogs. Again. Later, Cole Wailed.
Had a great sleep in the morning again, after a false start waking up grumpy. Then lunch. Then walked the dogs. I filmed him in his jolly jumper, which I’d post here, except Windows Movie Maker isn’t co-operating.
Naptime sucked. We’ve been trying to get a handle on getting a proper sleep schedule, and nothing seems to work. I heard some advice on a call-in show on Rogers Community 22 basically saying, “if you can get them NEARLY asleep, but let them fall asleep without being held, you’re one step closer to independent sleeping.” Made perfect sense, and seemed logically sound. Only thing is, children don’t have to buy into that logic.
After letting him fall asleep ALL THE WAY (by accident), I had given up on the “tip” and was just lying him down. As “luck” would have it, he opened his eyes and looked at me. Very very groggy. I thought, “heck, he’s already lying down on his own. I’ll just coo and shush and rub his back, and he’ll be out on his own. Semi-independently. No-brainer!”
Up on both arms, push-up style. Looks at me with bleary eyes. Collapses. Smooshes his face into the bed. Cries a bit. “Shush-sh-sh-sh-sh” Up on all fours, staring at me with wide, red-rimmed eyes. Screams.
This continues for about 45 minutes, when the screaming and crying becomes “MEM,” and I believe him that he’s actually hungry. Half a bottle later, and he’s asleep in my arms. The whole exercise was basically pointless. It worked VERY well at frustrating me, mind you.
About Being Boring
People (especially young, hip, child-free singletons) hate it when their friends become parents. Because parents are boring. Or at least, I feel pretty boring. A conversation that I repeat every other day with whoever cares to ask the questions:
Them: Hey, how’s it going? How have you been lately?
Me: Pretty good, pretty good.
Them: What you been up to?
Me: Taking care of Cole. Then using the leftover portion of the day to mindlessly watch TV or have relatively superficial conversations on Twitter.
Them: Anything else?
Me: Did I mention that I take care of Cole during the days? Yeah. That’s pretty much the high point of the day.
Them: Sounds… great… what do you guys do?
Me: Oh, mostly I fight him for naps. But in-between we do a lot of giggling and playing with toys. Sometimes we go shopping, swimming, or walk the dogs.
What some people don’t quite realize is that any activities I engage in other than Daddy Daycare are basically excuses to do something to avoid going stir crazy. I will go on some trivial errand (we need a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Off to Home Depot!) just to have a destination. Walking the dogs is actually pretty exciting because I get to take care of what is normally a later-in-the-evening chore… while simultaneously entertaining the monkey (or letting him nap). But, really, it’s to get out of the house. Swimming and meetups are different activities yet again, but the primary goal is… you guessed it… to get out of the house and find something different to do while waiting for the next naptime.
Naptimes are milestones, and with him being a crazy sleeper, I’m basically obsessed with capitalizing on sleepy moments. So everything else is made secondary to the goal of making it through the next nap.
Now, my point in all this isn’t to complain. I enjoy Daddy Daycare, and hanging out with the monkey IS actually great fun. The point is simply this: I acknowledge that I’m a boring conversationalist right now. Even if I had interesting activities and hobbies in my life right now, I only have the energy in-between taking care of Cole to engage in short, superficial conversations. I might even have interesting things to talk about, but when asked, “up to anything else?” my mind somehow blanks out and all I can think is, “fighting to get to naptime?”
Or, if I’m lucky, I get to say, “Oh, and we walked the dogs.”
