So - how did we do? Well, to be fair, I thought it was actually really good!
Before doing this today, I have been coming home from work and seeing Claire and Jack for just a few hours before bed and, normally, Jack seems to go into this routine of crying for about two hours solid. For no reason. He really goes for it too, and makes you think you're not doing something that you should! Anyway, Claire passes full control of the baby to me in the evening, as I haven't seen him much all day - fair enough. Except for this crying.
Well, onto today.
If I'm honest, I was fully braced for a day of non-stop screaming and crying as, recently, this is mostly as I've seen him. But he didn't really cry that much at all. As a result, the day seems to have flown by. I haven't had much time to do anything else, so I can see why Claire says that sometimes she has no time to do anything when she's at home with him all day, everyday.
So, what did we do? Can't remember right now... I did have the best intentions of trying to write down what Jack and I got up to, for the purpose of the blog... it just didn't work out like that!
Claire and I had a chat the night before about what I needed to do and when. I think that for some absolutely bizarre reason that I would forget to feed him, or forget that he's crying because he's tired, etc etc. Well, I probably would have, if I'm honest, and I'm glad that she drew up a timetable of what we needed to do. Here's what she left us with.
- 13:00 Feed Jack
- 13:30 Get Jack to sleep
- 16:00 Feed Jack
- 16:30/17:00 Walk
- 19:00 Feed Jack
And throw in about a million nappy-changes, and you're done.
Claire left around twelve-ish, leaving Jack foolishly in my capable hands.
13:00 came around fairly quickly and I had to feed Jack. Claire has been expressing milk, aka booby-juice, and so the milk is stocked up in the fridge as needed. Except now, Jack has a taste for having warm milk, as we have been giving him milk fresh from the... Claire. And of course, it's warm, whereas he's been having milk straight from the fridge before - the midwife in the hospital told us that if he'd have it cold, give it to him like that....so, we did. So, now, I had to warm the milk using a little single-bottle warmer, that takes 5 minutes or so to heat up.
The milk went down no problem, and by the time he had finished it all, it was pretty much near 13:30 and he's already getting sleepy.
He had about 45 mins asleep upstairs in his bedroom (where he spent his first night last night) before he's awake again. He doesn't seem to wake up and scream, like I think I would have expected (not knowing much about babies as a whole), but instead he lays there and looks at his cot mobile, that hangs over his bed and gurgles at it. I heard that he was awake and so I nipped up there and switched on the mobile, so that it spins round whilst playing Bach, or Mozart, or someone.
Here, he sort of reminded me about myself when I was little, as I would wake up in the morning and play with my toys by myself and keep myself occupied. Incidentally, I would also do this when Russell, Emma and I would all be fighting or bickering with each other as we would, and we'd all get sent to our rooms; but this didn't really bother me, as I would then spend the next couple of hours playing Lego or something by myself, to the point whereby my parents thought I was actually enjoying my punishment and would chuck me out of my room!!
Jack and I then spent most of the afternoon playing with his toys a little and generally messing around a bit. Jack had an unscheduled nap at about 15:20, which sort of threw me a little, as I was looking at the notes that Claire had left, and not expecting him to drop off in my arms whilst half-way upstairs!
So, now my 16:00 food was slightly put back a bit, as Jack was just waking up again. Lazy ol' boot. He ended up having food and we played around with his toys a bit more.
At 17:00, I was determined to get out of the house and go for a walk with Jack and Alfie, the dog. I put Jack in his harness, and he hung in front of my chest, as per the photos in a previous post. Whilst dangling away, I got Alfie hooked up onto his lead and we started going for a walk, but Jack wasn't comfortable and there's something in the field that scared Alfie a few weeks ago and so you really have to drag him sideways across the field. So, the baby is upset, Alfie plainly doesn't want to be there and I am trying to fight them both off, determined to at least reach the first gate in the field...! So, I turned around to come back, which now means that Jack is still waving his arms and legs about, but now Alfie is pulling really hard on the lead, trying to rush to get home! Nightmare. So much for a quiet walk!
Jack and I dotted around the house a bit more until Claire got back around six o'clock-ish. So now, it was Claire's turn to walk in on Jack during his routine crying hours.
So... all in all, I think it went well. But went you sit down and think about what else I have done today, 'not much' springs to mind. I had some stuff I was trying to do on the computer throughout the day, but it was really fragmented, as I would just sit down to start doing something, and then Jack would wake up or the dog started barking at someone who dared to walk past our house, or something. So, it was five minutes here and there throughout the day, which wasn't a problem as I had nothing urgent to do, per se, but trying to get it done in a day would be nice!
What else did I learn? I want to mention here something about Claire doing this all day, everyday. I think it's re-confirmed what I already knew about her, in that she does have a lot of time and patience for Jack (more patience than she does for me, for sure!), and I don't mean that just because she's with him all day. What I mean, is that I know that when Claire is at home all day with Jack, she's with him as much as she can be, and when they're doing 'stuff', it's doing things that he's learning - she's always trying to read to him, or keep his mind entertained by focusing on different toys around the house so that he doesn't get bored. So,despite Claire saying in the past that she doesn't have that much of a creative imagination, I beg to differ, as today I found it tough to keep changing my battle-plan with Jack to keep him amused and entertained, and I would have said I have a good imagination for things like that.
So, my hat is off to my wife Claire - Jack really is a little diamond (when he's not screaming the house down in the evenings!!) - it seems like he's learning something new all the time and sometimes he just smiles at you when you're not expecting it, and you can't help but smile back and be involved with him. He's great and she has obviously been a significant catalyst in the learning process.
I might have mentioned about Claire's internet shopping habit, namely the spending part, but pretty much everything that we have for Jack is here because Claire has looked into things and thought hard about things for him and has bought stuff as we went along and might need them. He's not even old enough to know what a book is, yet he already sits on Claire's lap and listens to her intently reading to him - maybe when he's old enough to understand what it actually is that she's reading to him, maybe he will already understand the concept of reading a book and will hopefully enjoy it a lot more and not put up a fight about it. Who knows, but she amazes me more and more. She does all this and still has time to wash my socks and keep me in-line. Thanks, wife.
No comments:
Post a Comment