This was from a while ago, but I needed…time to pass. I have made it a habit to put the seat down, but lapses do occur. I hope you all take the lesson to heart: Dads, put the seat down. Everyone else, enjoy.
When Mom’s away Dad will…decide to be a guy and not put the toilet down for once. Then he will proceed to go to the bathroom at 4 a.m., sit down with the illogical fear of waking the kid with his pee, and realize that mistakes were made…
Wait what? Spring Break? Cabo? He’s not even 2?!?! Well…not quite, but daycares do often have a Spring Break…since Grandma is out that means Dad and Mom were juggling work a few weeks ago. It really felt hard to get any chunk of time to get stuff done while the other person was watching P, but we tried. Our main goal was to go do stuff and tire him out during the day and hope that he sleeps well in the evening. I think the plan worked…eh haha. He had good afternoon naps, but evening wasn’t all that different.
Overall it was nice to be able to spend some time with P though. I was able to take some walks to coffee in the morning with him where he got overpriced Oat Milk and a Manresa Bread Croissant (super Bay Area right?). He was able to walk further than I thought, but I still carried him half of the way. Carin and I were also able to go to a small science/zoo center that P really enjoyed. I think he just had a good time going out and hanging with us.
Additional bonus with my sister and cousin visiting that weekend. They could play with P and help keep him entertained. I was also able to spend a little bit of time on P’s learning tower and everyone pitched in to help move the planter setup along a little bit more as well. I was a little worried about him going back to daycare after the long week with Mom and Dad, but he was fine!
P is onto his second week of daycare now. First week went ok. We ended up taking him home early the last day of last week so that he could get a decent nap. He was consistently only doing 1 hour of nap at daycare and whining the rest of the nap time. He also started to fake cry during drop-off, but doesn’t resist going to the classroom and is fine when the teacher holds him.
This week has been, well it’s hard to say because….surprise surprise: he’s sick and we haven’t been sending him to daycare. Tbh this might be from school or it might be from me. I came down with something over CNY and he might have gotten it from me. This is his first real cold (runny nose, cough), but he’s been a pretty good trooper about it. Hardest part is that nighttime sleeping has been rougher for him due to the congestion.
We took him to the doc just to confirm there wasn’t anything else than the common cold. Learned that decongestants don’t work well on kids P’s age and that honey is best for his cough.
Tip: I found out that directly taking the honey is better than mixing it in with a liquid.
Overall he’s still himself so we’re not super worried. Just gotta shrug it off.
P just started daycare this week. We were finally lucky/patient/just darn waited long enough for P to get a spot at one of the daycares we were waitlisted at. I believe this one was only about a year and a half wait (unlike some other ones that basically just told me to come back when he was 2).
We were of course worried how he was going to handle the daycare environment given he’s been at home for the first 20 months. We decided to start with the “school day” schedule which gets off at 3 (right after their nap) to ease him into full day later.
Side note: I was a bit surprised by how many schedule variations are available at schools nowadays so it was good to get a sense of the different options and figure out what would work best for us.
We did a couple trial sessions where P came for one of the activities prior to actually starting and things seemed to be pretty good. He’s usually a bit shy to start and also hears less English at home (but we’re confident he’ll pick it right up once he’s there).
Outcome? Maybe I was already prepared for a worst case scenario, but after two days he’s had no tears on drop off so far. Strategy going in was to dump and run. My largest fear was the nap and both days he actually had pretty crappy naps, but he was able to fall asleep which was honestly more than I expected.
We’ll have to see how things progress as times moves on. I am thinking he may actually realize what’s happening and start to protest during drop-offs. I am also keeping an eye out for sniffles and behavior learned from others haha.
I actually meant to write this during or soon after our encounter with sleep training, but well…it didn’t go so well and we were too stressed out and I just forgot about it. Lots of folks will tell you that it’ll work eventually and you just have to stick with it. I will tell my friends that as well, but I will also give them my story about how well…the quote below sums it up.
“Preston wins” – my Dad
Sleep training is something most parents will go through at some point. What it means varies a lot, but the result most of us are looking for is…sleep…for us. Oh yes, for the baby too, but let’s be real. It’s the glimmer of hope that a logical method will yield an expected (and welcome) outcome.
Most of the time the recommendation seems to be that it’s possible to start as early as after the baby has already been weaned off of all night feedings. There are many great books for how to do that. One that I read and found to be ok was: 12 hours by 12 weeks. Obviously that didn’t work otherwise we wouldn’t need to try sleep training and baby would be sleeping 12 hours…
At around 15 months P’s moved off a 2 nap cycle and onto a 1 nap cycle. We never went and tried any particular sleep training method again and he still is not what I would consider sleep trained (we still need to get him if he wakes).
I feel like I may just be consigned to the fact that at some point he will just grow out of it. Every once in a while he’ll give me a glimpse that he can sleep through the night. Unfortunately it also seems that the achievement ebbs and flows based on what’s going on with his development…I’ll be honest it feels like more ebbing than flowing.
On the up side that development has made him much more interactive…and mobile. I think understands a lot more than he lets on. He is also becoming more…opinionated.
Only 4 days of effort required to escape from the new blockade. Security measures must be increased.
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
-Robert Collier
Had a few things this past week that all came together to make me realize all the subtle ways that being a parent has influenced my perspective.
I like to play a thought experiment game with myself and others. Thinking back to when I was a kid (PCs weren’t a thing) and now (PCs are ubiquitous) I wonder how P’s experience will already differ from mine and where there will be things he won’t relate to. <INSERT OLD GUY TALK> In my day…
The Self Driving Car: P won’t have a driver’s license unless he wants to have a hobby driving a car. I think by the time P is old enough for a license, it’s much more likely that he will be part of a subscription car sharing service. Or at least he’ll just be telling the family car where to take him and what time to pick him up. He will probably get a license when he’s older in case self driving cars haven’t fully penetrated the world. There may also be the case that riders of self driving cars may still need a new type of license designating the ability to take a self driving car by oneself.
The Automated Home: P will be used to talking to the house to have it do stuff.
I don’t think he’ll get the experience of always having a smart home (sorry P it’s expensive to get all those parts). He’ll probably still remember the dumb home, but my guess is at some point the cost of building these things into new homes will go down. It’s very likely he’ll have friends that have very smart homes and it’ll be the norm to talk to your home asking it random stuff (and also to have it play music, buy stuff, and tell jokes).
Shopping for groceries: P’s groceries will be delivered via robot courrier
This is more of a stretch, but heck this is my thought experiment and we do see robot food delivery beta testing out in Palo Alto. Groceries may not be that far behind. It may even by via…
Drones will be a thing: P will think drones are normal
Drones are still figuring out their niche, but I believe there’s enough momentum and benefit that it’ll be a norm somewhere. Whether it’s at the airport, surveying natural disasters, following a news anchor with a cam the industry will find its home.
E-Sports will be a thing: P will have just as many e-sports to follow as normal sports
Can’t say I’m unbiased. I’m super excited that e-sports has risen to a place of relative respectability in the sports world. I think there’s a chance that this will continue to grow and sprout out new teams and games.
Tablets will be more ubiquitous than laptops: P will want to swipe and touch all the screens
I’m not entirely sure, but I feel like tablets are on the rise. The older and younger demographic seems to be latching on to tablets (and smart phones) as the devices of choice. They offer fairly intuitive interfaces and many apps cover all the basic needs of this population. Laptops will still be used for working folks, but I wouldn’t be surprised if for most families tablets are used at home (except for the enthusiasts that want the flexibility that laptops provide). This idea is definitely open to debate.
Focus will be a skill that needs to be cultivated: P’s generation will be ADD and FOMO about everything
P is going to be growing up in a society that’s more “connected” and “on” than ever. Given that reality, I think it’s going to be hard for folks to disconnect. I believe his generation’s soft skill of choice to cultivate will be “Focus” akin to our generation’s skill of “Grit” I hope it doesn’t get to that point, but I believe the research is still so early no official recommendations will go out until much later.
College isn’t guaranteed: Fewer kids will decide that college is the best route for them.
With the cost of college growing I’m not sure what sort of financial burden going to college will place on P’s generation. I’ve personally started preparing for that via a 529, which I’ve written about. But who knows if that will even be enough to cover the growing costs. You can bet folks will be doing a cost benefit analysis given how the Millennials are feeling about college nowadays. That said, a lot can change between now and then, but policy moves slow.
Ok that’s enough for one sitting. Perhaps follow-up posts will follow as I discuss this with more folks. As always I’m open to hearing what others think…after all
I’ve been there, maybe you have too. As a new dad it’s hard to figure out how to be helpful. I’ve got some quick tips that I found useful to well…feel useful. A lot of these probably fall into the range of common sense, but everyone does it a little differently. I’m sure some folks have ways that I hadn’t considered before too.
Tip #1: Breast feeding is hard. Make it as easy as possible for mom.
The takeaway from classes and nurses you’d think it’s this magical natural thing that will just happen. I’m sure it was that way for some people, but it wasn’t natural at all for us and it’s very stressful (it’s early on and you’re already like “Baby, just do what I want you to!”. Thus I decided my goal was to have Carin focus only on breast feeding for the beginning and I tried to take care of all the other stuff.
Why? Let’s break it down. Early on in a baby’s life, you’ll find that the doctor primarily wants to know “how much does the baby weigh?” They’re supposed to lose weight post birth and gain it back. Well how does a baby gain weight? It eats. Who feeds it? Mostly mom. If baby isn’t gaining weight back…well…there could be a number of reasons. But many moms will take that as direct feedback that they aren’t doing a good job feeding and it’s not a far leap from that to them feeling like they’re a bad mom. Dads. You don’t want this. No one is sleeping well and breast feeding strip mines the body’s nutrients. Also there’s postpartum to watch out for. Be positive and alleviate other factors which brings me to the following tips.
Tip #2 (Kinda): Discuss with your partner and have a clear understanding what night duty looks like.
One thing that was difficult to figure out early on was how to handle baby’s night schedule. You’re both sleep deprived, if you’ve decided to go the route of breastfeeding (either directly or via pump) that means that mommy is up anyways, paternal leave (if you get it) is usually much shorter than maternity leave which means you have job duties on top of daddy duties. Does it make sense to also be up? Cop out answer…it depends. Work it out with mom. That way everyone knows what to expect. I found it useful to wake up and help with the diaper changes and provide moral support early on, but as we settled into “normalcy” I stopped staying up for the night time feeds as much.
Tip #3: Clean the pump and bottles
If breast feeding was established it means you’re going to run into the pump at some point. These pumps have a ton of small parts that need to stay clean. If you’re not using the pump that means you have a ton more bottles to clean…bottles can also have quite a few small parts. Help mom. Wash the parts. Mom may also have a certain way she’d like the stuff washed. Just follow her rules on this. Carin dislikes washing them and grandma watches P all day so at home I’m the one primarily washing the bottles and pump parts. We also have a separate washing and drying rack for these parts. I do it that way.
Tip #4: Little things add up
You may be noticing a theme, but help out with things when you can. Volunteer to: change a diaper, feed him solids, wash the mess after trying to feed him solids, help bathe him, put him to sleep, etc. It helps your partner out, but guess what. It’s cliché, but these are the Dad things that you should appreciate while you can.
Tip #5: Give your partner a break
If you think being Dad is a full time job, just imagine being Mom. I feel like I have to work twice as hard to pull my Dad weight because a lot of the kid stuff just naturally falls with mom. Sometimes it’s nice for mom to just have a break without the kid. It might be a night out or lunch with friends. It might even be as simple as coffee break and some reading. We’re all 3 dimensional people, but that can be easy to forget while parenting.
Tip #6: Clean up after the kid
Once the kid is a bit older they’ll probably have an area to play in. And that place will likely be a mess by the end of the day. Help out by cleaning and resetting the area. I do believe that consistency and order helps them have certain expectations which makes life easier for everyone. Carin is a much more…clean and organized individual than I might be and while we have different philosophies on cleaning (I may have said that cleaning is moving things from A to B…) when it comes to P’s stuff I reset his area.
Disclaimer: I say Mom/Dad a lot, but the tips are meant to be applicable for all family types. I’m writing from my personal experience where Mom/Dad are the terms we use.
First off, congratulations on surviving to 1! We hope for your continued thriving through our fumbles. You are as resilient as I hoped! =D
Even though you’re 1 today, I’m celebrating my 2nd Father’s Day…No, not because I have another kid. Imagine what the first Father’s Day was like for me. Uh…it’s like being the youngest in the classroom. Just barely made class of 2016 Dads.
It’s unlikely you’ll remember either Father’s Day, but be assured that I am waaaay better at this job than one year ago and I hope to continue improving. Like many new careers there’s a learning curve and I hope to hockey stick in my performance. I understand that you plan to change drastically and make the nature of my job more about people skills and less about mechanics in the future. Rest assured that I have read only the best books on the matter of negotiation.
Thanks to everyone that celebrated with us. You made the day much more special than we anticipated and I hope he can look back and understand how lucky he is. P, no matter what happens just remember that you’re loved.
