Over the last few weeks, Atticus has been showing off new skills in quick succession. It all started with crawling. Now he’s pulling himself up on everything and crawling up stairs. I suppose this is a natural development, but it looks like Evel Knievel to me!
Posted in Parenthood, Raising Atticus
January flew by. We didn’t even notice the cold – but we enjoyed the chinook (or whatever) that rolled through here. I’ve been busy working on the household’s deferred maintenance – there’s a lot of it – and baby-proofing rooms.
Installing a baby gate at the top of our entrance-way stairs, between a closet and a banister, proved to be a frustrating, but ultimately successful, affair. The gate has an annoying alarm to alert you if you’ve left the gate open. We turned it off on the first night and haven’t yet turned it back on! I suppose I’d better do it, just in case.
Next on the list of things to tackle is a recaulking of the shower. The previous owners of our place did a bunch of renovations. Superficially these are very nice. Nuff said.
Here’s a pic of Lil A enjoying the bathtub before I pulled the caulking out.
Posted in Parenthood, Raising Atticus
Change usually comes with a mixture of enthusiasm and discomfort. With J back at work, a new routine has emerged, differing quite a bit from the one we followed while I was working. For one, J is following different work hours, going in early and coming home early. This is working well to accommodate A’s eating schedule and – so far – is limiting night feedings.
Another key part of the new routine is that A is attending daycare on a more full-time basis, with three long days and a short one. I realize that most folks home on parental leave remove their kids from daycare, but we have found a great spot and don’t want to lose it. More importantly, I feel the social interaction A gets from engaging with other kids has bad a positive impact on his development.
But a new routine is bound to have a few snags, where timings don’t work out properly. So I find myself with a sleeping boy in the backseat; he needs a very good nap, but I’m unable to get the errands I had planned for us completed.
Oh well. He looks too cute to wake:
Posted in Parenthood, Raising Atticus
J went back to work yesterday – and I stayed at home. Having left my job, and embraced parental leave, I realize I have a few things to learn.
The pace is different, for one. And by that it seems even busier than my job. I guess that’s because there are many, interconnected deadlines every day. Getting supper prepared and served at the same time as feeding A is a tricky act (it worked last night – barely), or grocery shopping with my 25-pound son. Then there is the myriad of tasks to do: they’ve been piling up since December, due to Xmas and illness.
To deal with this, we’ve turned again to our trusty iPhones and I particular a new App: HoneyDo. This one allows J and I to create a shared to-do list and to complete the items in real time. So far it is pretty cool.
More to come in the ongoing adventures of New Dad.
I’d figured the worrying had gone away, more or less. Originally, I’d begun worrying pretty much the moment A was born. The worrying was mostly about how to keep him alive. How to not let him get too cold/hot. How to feed him enough. How prevent him from falling or from things falling on him. Clothing, blankets, bottles and wraps all constituted a potential danger.
Gladly, I grew out of that as A grew himself.
But then he got a cold.
And he had problems sleeping because he wasn’t used to breathing through his mouth when his nose got plugged up.
Then he got an eye infection too.
And so he was rubbing his eyes and rubbing his ears.
And I couldn’t do much except worry.
But now he is mostly over all of this.
But now he is also moving around a lot more, sitting and rolling (although no crawling yet) and sticking toys in his mouth. Now I’m reassessing the dangers of everything. In short, our house is a deathtrap. Okay, well, maybe not a deathtrap, but certainly there are lots of things left to make baby-safe.
Of course, he’s eating food now, too. So there is the constant danger of choking.
But now I’m reading about all the potential toys out there packed full of lead or something called “phthalates” (which looks ominously like a Lovecraftian word).
And thus the worrying has spun itself up again. So I need to come up with some coping mechanisms.
I think I found one.
And basically it comes down to this new rule: please don’t give my kid any toys/food/germs.
We cool?
Posted in Parenthood, Raising Atticus
Tagged fatherhood, kids, parental worry, Parenthood
