With Lindsey going back to work¹ starting this week, we decided to help the transition by having me take the week off. Starting next week a combination of my mom most days and my father-in-law on wednesdays will take over, but I have enough vacation time that if I don’t use some of it I will stop accruing new time. So here I am, playing stay at home dad for a week.

Day One - Day Two - Day Three - Day Four - Day Five - Day Five

A slightly different morning

Last night was fairly rough as far as sleep goes. And thats once Kaitlyn actually WENT to sleep. At 10:30 PM she was laying on the bed between me and Lindsey babbling away quite happily. She was also repeatedly kicking my arm which is only cute for the first 30 seconds, then it gets progressively less cute. She FINALLY went to sleep at 11:30 and only stayed asleep until 3:30. To her credit she did go back down at 4:30 after Lindsey nursed her, but then that was it for normal sleep. At 5:30 Lindsey asked me to go get Kaitlyn and bring her into our room so she could nurse in bed. At least, I’m told she did, fortunately (or unfortunately?) for me I have only the vaguest recollection of the experience. The only piece I sort of remember is that I got out of bed, stood there for a minute and asked Lindsey, “What am I supposed to be doing?”. Yeah, I sometimes have full conversations in my sleep and don’t remember them² (a genetic gift from my mother³). Once again though, by about 8:30 this morning she was ready and raring to go. I’m really hoping that she someday learns the value of sleeping in.

This morning I thought I would try something different when we came downstairs, mainly for selfish reasons. I got an iTunes email last night which mentioned that Switchfoot’s latest album, “Fading West” was available for streaming on iTunes Radio for free! So after letting the dog out to do her business, and feeding both the dog AND the cat, I moved Kaitlyn’s play mat out of the living room and into the front room⁴ where I have a stereo system set up with a record player and a cable for my iPhone. It went pretty well! The music is very good, I highly recommend the band in general and the new album in particular (although I haven’t finished listening all the way through yet) and I think I may pick up one of their holiday packages that comes with a lot of cool stuff, its not just a new album, but also a movie as well. As far as Kaitlyn was concerned she was happy to listen to the music with me… until she wasn’t. So considering it seemed to be about the same time as the last few days for a morning nap, we trekked back into the living room and she’s now been asleep in her rocker for almost an hour.

A Service Appointment

As an interesting wrinkle to today’s schedule, our new car was due for its first service appointment. The plan was for us to take it in before Lindsey had to go to work, and then I would drop her off and pick her up afterwards so that I had the car in the case of an emergency. We thought the appointment was at 11, so while Kaitlyn still slumbered we had a bit of a conundrum - we didn’t want to wake her but had to take the car in. Fortunately my father-in-law Tom came to the rescue. He has Wednesday’s off, and so he met me at the dealership. It turns out the appointment was actually at 1:30, but Toyota didn’t have any issue taking the car early. So far I have nothing but good things to say about everyone at Toyota. Everyone I’ve spoken to has been nice, engaging, and helpful.

Once we got home from the dealership I took Kaitlyn back from Lindsey so she could finish getting ready for work and eat lunch (Tom and I stopped and picked up Subway on the way home). It wasn’t very long after I took Kaitlyn that my hand felt wet, I did what I think most parents do - I smelled it. Sadly the results told me we had a decent sized blowout, since I was smelling poop through not only the diaper, and onesie, but the pants she was wearing as well. Ah the joys of parenthood. A quick diaper and outfit change and we were good to go. My plan was to drop Lindsey off at work, come home for Kaitlyn’s second nap, and then head out to Ikea since we trekked out there last weekend for a couple of shelves - one for Kaitlyn’s room and one for the bathroom - but they were out of stock. Fortunately I used their iOS app to check stock because they were still out of one of the two shelves. This left me in the strange position of not having an outing for the day.

To pass the time I decided to take advantage of an awesome christmas gift I received from some good friends and I began my Hitchcock marathon⁵. The gift was a boxed blu-ray set of five Hitchcock classics: Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, and North by Northwest. So while Kaitlyn napped I started watching North by Northwest. I’m a big fan of classic movies and classic styles - I wish I could wear a suit every day⁶. Unfortunately I didn’t get to finish the movie before Kaitlyn woke up and needed a bottle. We hung out for awhile until it looked like she needed another nap, but unfortunately the timing was pretty cruddy. If I put her into her rocker and got her to sleep, she would probably have been sleeping still when we needed to leave to pick Lindsey up. So rather than have to wake her I held her which ended up meaning it took her longer to fall asleep than she would have in her rocker, but she fell asleep anyways, just on my shoulder instead.

When it came time to pick Lindsey up I loaded Kaitlyn into her carseat where she promptly went back to sleep. We picked up the car from the dealership (the service department had called to let us know they were done while we were on our way to drop Lindsey off at work!) but then Lindsey took Kaitlyn home since she was still sleeping, and I went to Walmart and Staples to run a few errands for Lindsey. Then it was back home to watch the University of Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball team beat up on Mississippi State (to be fair Mississippi State actually had a 3 point lead at halftime, but they never stood a chance in the second half). After dinner and bathtime, Lindsey nursed Kaitlyn, and at 9:45 she was asleep… for about 15 minutes. She finally ended up going down again at 10:20, and she’s been asleep for about 30 minutes now, so hopefully she’s out for a good long while, and I can get some sleep.

We’ve crossed the mid-way point of the week and it hasn’t been too hard on me, but I’m definitely more tired then I was at the start of the week and more tired then I’ve been most weeks recently. Lindsey has a bad habit of letting me sleep when she knows I’m going to work in the morning. I’ve tried to convince her that I’d rather she wake me up and let me help, but she’s stubborn - and I love her for it. I was already amazed and impressed with the way she’s handled staying at home all day with Kaitlyn, but this week is definitely deepening that amazement. She doesn’t seem to believe me, but she’s done a great job so far, and she’s only getting better.