Month: May 2017

It’s taken a while to put together this post since I’ve been back at work, but I had some personal thoughts after having spent my final 2 weeks of paternity as a stay at home Dad.  First off let’s acknowledge that many folks don’t get the opportunity to spend 2 solid weeks with their kids as part of paternity so I’m grateful for that time.

BLUF: Kudos to the parents that are able to handle the job of Stay-at-Home Parent.  It’s not easy and let’s face it…it’s a job.  Like most jobs while there are difficulties, it’s also rewarding.

I joke that I’ll be the stay at home parent and Carin can work, but in reality I think I’m happy to be able to work where I do.  What I do wish is that driving home didn’t take so long through traffic.  I also caveat that Mommies have it harder.  Carin was still doing the morning milk and prepping his food while I handled all the cleaning.

Below were some of my experiences and takeaways during Daddy Daycare

• It’s hard to focus too far in the future, you’re just trying to get the next task done
• You’re the conductor of the train, but there’s a lot of other stuff that’s not exactly in your control and if something tosses the train off schedule it’s hard to keep the rest of the day on track.
• Your day is structured around these fairly immovable tentpoles of food and naps so your day is chunked really strangely (for me)
• You’d think you can read or listen to podcasts or watch Netflix…but I couldn’t
  • Read: you can kind of do it, but P vies for attention and also likes to grab/eat/tear books
  • Podcasts: Hard to be present with P and actually grok podcast info (especially if you listen at 1.5+ speeds)
  • Netflix: No screen time for P yet and he already inherently wants to look at screens
• I felt like I was always at Defcon 3/4ish with temporary rises to higher levels.  If it was quiet for too long the alarm would sound and I’d do a check to see what P was up to
• Naps: Take them when he takes them and hope he gets a long one
• Kids change super fast…Over the 2 weeks I feel like P has changed in what he can do and is still discovering new things
• It is a somewhat monotonous lifestyle if you don’t mix it up.  Carin signed us up for some music class things, etc to get out of the house
• Counterpoint to the above, I was still able to find something to mention most days.  Sure the sample size is small, but if you’re present you’ll more likely than not, find something special about each day
• Enjoy the time with your kid while you can.  They grow up super fast…P is almost 1.

Days without accident: 11
Nap Difficulty (1-10): 2
Dad Naps: 1
Meals Skipped: 0
Allergy Alert: Low
Special Events: Farmer’s Market and Coffee
P Things: He is biting my belt.  I think he cries more when I enter his room after a nap.

I’ll consider today my last full day with P now that I’m back to work tomorrow.  P woke up even earlier today at 5.  It’s really tough to put him back for some more sleep at this point.  He’s yawning, but isn’t tired enough to sleep soundly.  Close to 6 Carin fed him and after his morning nap we got ready to head over to the farmer’s market after his morning nap.

Hippo Uncle bought some fruit and P got to have some fruit samples.  The timing is always kinda weird because he’s usually still a little groggy from the morning nap and his pre-lunch meal happens around the end of when we’re done shopping so he sometimes looks grumpy while we’re there.  Oh yea, he doesn’t like hats.

P Things:
We think he might still be teething since he’s still super drooly and has started to bite random stuff.  In particular my belt is a new favorite chewing item.  Carin and I have also postulated that he cries more when I walk in after he wakes from his naps.  What a punk.

Day 14, check

Days without accident: 10
Nap Difficulty (1-10): 2
Dad Naps: 1
Meals Skipped: 0
Allergy Alert: Medium
Special Events: Morning Hike, In and Out Lunch
P Things: When P sees animals he goes “Ah! Ah!”  Still not quite the best at feeding himself with hands.

P slept through the night last night, but woke up at 5:30.  I didn’t hear him, but Carin got him.

After debating back and forth we finally decided to get our lazy asses up and go do a small easy local hike.  P fell asleep after a bit in the carrier so he actually missed most of the hike.  He slept for longer than usual thanks to his early wake up time so our hike ended up being longer than expected.  When he finally got up he was able to check out the animals on the small farm that’s part way up the hike.

We took Carin’s cousin to In and Out for lunch and so P can stare at all the people in red.  When P went down for a nap I think everyone else crashed too.  Except maybe Carin.  I think she was doing something else, I don’t quite remember.

P Things:
When we went for our hike P saw some animals.  He likes to go Ah! and point.

P has been practicing his pick up food and put it in mouth skill.  As you can see below he’s still working on it.

Day 13, check

Days without accident: 9
Nap Difficulty (1-10): 2
Dad Naps: 1
Meals Skipped: 0
Allergy Alert: Medium
Special Events: P 11 Months, Walked to Donut Store, Went out for Lunch, Went to Japanese Store
P Things: Can put ping pong ball into the circle slot, Laughs at Farts

Today is technically my last day with the P.  He finally had a day where he slept until after 6 am.  When I heard him cry this morning and looked up at my phone and was relieved to see it was not 5 something.  After lounging resting for a bit more I got up and we got ready to walk with Uncle to the nearby donut shop.

For lunch we went to Tanto with Mommy and Uncle.  Unfortunately we forgot P’s food.  Since P already had milk we just shared bits of our food.  He was pretty good sitting there and seemed to like eating some of the basic stuff from our plates.

Both of P’s naps were decent today.  After lunch Mommy went back to work and I put P down, Uncle and I decided P had the right idea.  We all took a nap till Carin got back and then made a quick trip to Mitsuwa to look for Wasabi Salt for Uncle to bring back to Canada.  Unfortunately we did not find said salt.

P Things:
Carin seemed to have taught P how to put the ping pong balls into this circle slot in a box.  He still needs to work on the skill a bit, but he was able to do it a few times.
We also noticed that P has a tendency to laugh at farts.  We have no idea where he learned this (correct) behavior, but it amuses us to no end.

Day 12, check

Days without accident: 8
Nap Difficulty (1-10): 2
Dad Naps: 1
Meals Skipped: 0
Allergy Alert: Low
Special Events: Gone to Grocery and Coffee Shop
P Things: Escape from Living Room v2.0

Another early wake-up day for P.  I find when he wakes up after 5 am to be the most difficult because he’s still tired, yet not tired enough to go right back to sleep.  Also the light is starting to come out and that distracts him.  Luckily he was able to get a bit of sleep between 5 and 6 before I swapped with Mommy and crashed.

We did some more sippy cup practice today.  It took 30m to get half an oz in at which point we swapped back to bottle so he could finish eating.

Not a lot of events today.  Naps went pretty well today and we went out to pick up some veggies and swung by coffee.

P Things:
P has improved upon his escape to the kitchen technique.  First thing is now he knows to turn sideways when the gap is smaller.  He also seems to have figured out that the gap can be widened if he applies some force to the Pack n’ Play that I use to block to way.  This can only mean more trouble for me…

Day 11, check

Days without accident: 7
Nap Difficulty (1-10): 1
Dad Naps: 1
Meals Skipped: 0
Allergy Alert: Medium
Special Events: Uncle Visiting, Went to the Coffee Shop
P Things: Sippy Cup things, Kissing Books

Today P woke up early for the third time.  New trend…wake up time at 5:45.  I held him and he was calm, but definitely not sleepy.

Carin’s cousin is visiting us for a week and P and I went out to get him today.  We stopped by a place to grab lunch to go before heading back home.  Was a bit worried about whether P would have stranger danger, but it was fine.  He let Hippo Uncle hold him with no issues.  Though we think part of it may be that he just gets distracted looking at everything.  He also brought a whole bunch of Canadian gear for P.  I suppose it’s good in case we need to send P over to Canada for any reason…  Mommy came back in the afternoon and we all went out to get some coffee.  He got to stare at a bunch of people again.

His naps today were pretty easy though which was nice.  He got enough time in each nap without any intervention from me.  I really wish he could translate this behavior to his evenings.  They seem much more up in the air as far as difficulty and he is still waking up a few times a night needing help going back down.  The issue really being that once he stands up, he’s not going back down without help or passing out.

P Things:
We’ve been trying to get him more practice on the sippy cups.  He takes forever to drink half an ounce and plays for a bunch of the time.  I feel like there is this chicken and egg issue.  I can try and feed him with it, but he mostly plays with it and not that much is actually eaten.  BUT!  If I give it to him when he’s not hungry he’s even less motivated to try using it.  He seems to have the mechanics for using it, but some does spill out of his mouth.  I have heard that, like bottles, we may need to try a few different ones…but I don’t want to lol.  Let’s just hope he gets it eventually.

One other thing we noticed is that we think Carin’s mom taught P to kiss (more like a kiss-like motion.  He just face slams the page) good night to Llama llama in one of his books.  I’ve been trying to teach him to transfer that skill to an actual kiss.  If anything I think I’ve only perpetuated kissing books as a thing.  I will look out for him kissing other inanimate objects.

Day 10, check

Days without accident: 6
Nap Difficulty (1-10): 2
Dad Naps: 1
Meals Skipped: 0
Allergy Alert: Low
Special Events: Gymboree Class Plan Breaking Spree Extended!
P Things: Still scared of the vacuum, Plays ball with himself

Today P woke up early again except this time Mommy got him.  He has a trial class at Gymboree today.  For his age group most of the classes are a bit hard to make because of his nap schedule (immovable pillars…or at least when they move the whole foundation shifts and cracks lol).  The one today is at 11 and I think I’m going to have to split his feeding.  The bright side of an early wakeup is an earlier bottle.

Gymboree was fun for P today.  Since P woke up so early I helped him transition during his morning nap and he ended up going really long.  Pretty much past when we could make the class.  I guess reschedule for next week!    I was worried that the long morning nap would mess with the afternoon nap that’s been longer recently, but good news.  He still did a long one then =)  I hope this gets him back on track.

Special thanks to Mommy again who came home early so I could head to my dinner with the city council.

Random P Stuff:
P at some point developed being scared of the vacuum.  He used to be ok, so we’re not sure why it happened.  Since he learned to use the pillow as a way to crawl over the footrest I’ve been using the vacuum as a silent sentinel.  Today he faced his fears and went up to it.  However, when I made a noise that sounded like the vacuum his fears came roaring back out.  He’s also recently taken to playing ball with himself knocking it around and chasing it until it eventually gets stuck under the futon. 

Day 9, check

Days without accident: 5
Nap Difficulty (1-10): 2
Dad Naps: 0
Meals Skipped: 0
Allergy Alert: Medium
Special Events: None

Mommy’s back to work today and P woke up early again today at 5.  Back to Daddy duty.  I got him and kept him calm till around 6:30 and I think he had sleep on and off between the time.  Mommy was nice enough to let me go back to sleep for a bit before she took off.

The day was pretty uneventful.  Mommy got a car oil change done so was around for the afternoon feeding.  We let P run around in the walker and gave him a bath.  He has so much hair and it does need cutting, but Carin really wants to put it off as long as possible.  At least we can mess with it.

Early bedtime for him today because he woke up so early everything got shifted a bit up.

Day 8, check

Days without accident: 4
Nap Difficulty (1-10): 4
Dad Naps: 0
Meals Skipped: None
Allergy Alert: Low
Special Events: Farmers Market/Meetup w/ Esmé, Mitsuwa Plaza

P had a meetup with Esmé (kid of a friend of ours) planned today…but guess who woke up at 4 am and didn’t go back to bed (Carin says he just wanted to say Happy Mother’s Day early).  He ended up sleeping extra long in the morning so we had to bail on our play date.  We felt bad missing the time, but they understood that we didn’t want to wake him early either.    We ended up going to the farmers market at 11ish, but the parking was crazy at that point due to Mother’s Day brunching and an Irish festival happening that took up a parking lot.

I think play dates when kids at this age I think are really a chance for the parents to hang out with other parents that have similar constraints.  The kids at this point don’t really seem to interact all that much yet, but it’s kinda fun to see what they’ll do (I imagine it’s a lot of face poking).

Later on in the day we made a short trip out to the Mitsuwa Plaza to get some Matcha Love and 焼きたてパン from Clover.  It’d been so long since we’ve gone that I didn’t even realize that Koja Kitchen took over the Tea Ren Café.  Final stop was picking up some food for dinner because Mother’s Day.

Overall, fairly normal sounding day.  Would have tried to do more, but sometimes (more than sometimes…) you just gotta get the sleep back on track.

Funny photo for today: P was playing around in his walker and dropped this magazine he was staring at.  Then began to spin around as the walker pushed it around the floor.

Day 7, check

First off Happy Mother’s Day to all the hardworking Moms.  I hope everyone understands the depths of your efforts and you are appreciated every day, but may this one be especially full of rest and love.

Days without accident: 3
Nap Difficulty (1-10): 4
Dad Naps: 0
Meals Skipped: Breakfast
Allergy Alert: Low
Special Events: Bloomingdale’s Visit, Bath Time, Maybe teeth on top?

Finally the weekend…unfortunately P had really poor sleep last night.  He kept waking up and Carin ended up sleeping with him in grandma’s bed.  I haven’t talked about his night time routine, but it’s always more of a fight.  From what I hear that part doesn’t seem to get better with age…Orz

Played with P in the morning while mommy caught up on some zzz’s.  His morning nap was a bit harder, but luckily he went down after 1 failed transfer.  His afternoon nap…well he must have been tired.  He almost went 3 hours (which he never does) after helping him transition once.

We made a quick trip to Bloomingdale’s to return stuff earlier today at Stanford Mall and P was able to stare at dogs and people.  I guess he doesn’t see dogs that much so it’s interesting.

He didn’t really seem to want to eat that much today.  He kept holding the food in his mouth and eventually it would leak out or he’d cough and it would spray everywhere.  Have I mentioned he’s kind of a picky eater?  He doesn’t really like cold stuff that much, but seems to tolerate it if it’s something sweeter.

Also bath time!  With the mommy it’s way easier.  Since he slept so long in the afternoon we let him stay up a little longer and that’s when I think I noticed some white in his uppers.  He’s going to look funny with a bunch of teeth up top and 2 on the bottom :p

Today’s collage.

Day 6, check