For anyone who thinks being a stay at home mom is easy, give it a try for a few days and get back to me. Anyone who has stayed home with an infant for more than a day knows exactly what it is like and will sympathize when I say that you can't get much done around the house while watching one. This is the first week of my new schedule, work on Monday and Tuesday, home with our son on Wednesday and Thursday, and back to work on Friday. On my two days staying home, being "Mr. Mom", I experienced both ends of the infant spectrum; perfectly happy one day, fussy and overtired with moments of happiness the next. Neither day afforded me much time to do any chores around the house. I did manage to get a few things done, like dishes, vacuuming, and cleaning the kitchen floor, but that was about it over two days. But, I would never complain about the lack of time to do things, because that's not the main reason I am staying home. I am staying home to watch our son, not to get things done, and I relish every moment of bantering back and forth with his variety of sounds, reading books, talking to him, and watching him grow. I will say, however, that I would much rather prefer the all day happy baby that I got on Wednesday versus the little tired fussy baby I got on Thursday. Its simply that watching a tired fussy baby, who only has short periods of happiness throughout the day is emotionally draining. I now know what its like.
So what did we do? Well, Wednesday was my favorite day, not only because our son was Mr. Happy, but because it was beautiful out and allowed us to get outdoors for a bit. I won't get into all the nitty gritty details about feeding, changing diapers, and napping because, lets be honest, everyone knows that a baby does all those things multiple times a day and it would take up half of my description of what we did. So despite all the normal, routine baby activities, we had a couple other things we did. The first was take a trip to go see our chiropractor. An uneventful trip during which he slept on the way down and back. Early afternoon, however, I bundled him up, leashed up the dogs, and piled the crew in the car to head into the woods for a hike. It was amazing in the woods. After strapping our son into his carrier on my chest, we headed up the trail by a waterfall, dwarfed on both sides by enormous pine trees. These tall trees caught our son's attention immediately. He was swinging his head back and forth, trying to take it all in. Whenever we paused, he would start to follow the trees up, craning his neck to try and see the tops. I leaned back every time, giving him a little more of a vertical view and he just kept on looking; up, up, up. I thought he might take a little nap in the carrier, but no, the woods with all their silence, the variety of trees, the waterfall alongside of us, were just too interesting for our son to sleep through. The only time he started fussing a little was near the end of our hour and a half in the woods, but it could have been much worse. Luckily he only had a wet diaper and fell fast asleep once we started leaving. Thursday was a different matter all together.
I won't go into the details about Thursday, but will sum it up by saying he didn't want to nap, had a few good moments where we read books and played, but otherwise the day was filled with periodic house cleaning, calming a fussy baby, and attempting to get him to nap. The true nap finally came when we went for a long drive in the afternoon. That was obviously what he needed because when we got home, he was back to being Mr. Happy. Amazing what a little nap time will do. I completely understand what my wife went through for three months (not entirely obviously, but at least a glimpse). I understand her exhaustion that I would see upon returning home from work. That was me yesterday, not physically exhausted, just mentally and emotionally exhausted. I still wouldn't trade it for anything though. The time spent with my son is precious and I know that he will grow up quickly. The little advances he makes every day are amazing to witness. Over this past weekend he started figuring out his balance a little more. While holding him in a sitting position, he would wobble back and forth, side to side, but always bring his torso back upright, a major step towards sitting and eventually walking. And just yesterday, he achieved one of his own personal goals. Over his bouncy seat hangs three different toys, one on either side and one in the middle with a ring for grabbing. For weeks he had been trying to figure out how to control his arm and hand movements to grab that middle ring. He would come close on many occasion and swat it by accident, but yesterday was the first day where he was able to control the movement of his arms and hand enough to reach in front of him, stick his fingers through the ring, and grab on. What a day. That moment made all his fussiness go away in my mind. A small accomplishment, yes, but an enormous step for him. I look forward now to next week and what my two days at home with him will bring.
No comments:
Post a Comment