A Typical Weekend Day

So, now that I’ve become a dad, I’m beginning to understand why it is that my friends with kids were always kind of boring and usually late to show up for things. I am now paying for the arrogance and lack of understanding towards their situation…

Here’s what a typical weekend is for us now.

Let’s start at Friday evening:

• get home from work. Find out what little baby Peach is doing – usually either being fed or just finishing being fed. Occasionally she’ll be sleeping. Take Peach from Mom so that Mom can have some relief and time to check her emails, stretch her arms, go pee or do any of those things that we normally take for granted.
• if Peach wants feeding, I comfort her while alerting Mom to the situation. Usually Mom is doing something and takes 3-10 minutes to get sorted, so during this time I’m alone with an increasingly agitated and unhappy baby Peach. This is the part of becoming a dad I feared, and I still fear. It’s not that I don’t know what to do – rocking the little critter, talking to her, giving her a little massage all help. What I fear is that look on her little face, the one that plainly is cross with the tiniest hint of a pout which says, “You’re useless! Get that woman who can feed me!”
• Once Mom is feeding baby Peach, I’ll head to the kitchen to put on dinner. Nowadays dinners are very simple and relatively quick meals that don’t require a lot of complex cooking or preparation. We still cook for ourselves and avoid pre-packaged foods as much as we can, and are still eating some of the food we’d frozen in antiicpation of these days.
• Wait for Mom and Peach to finish, then take Peach from Mom to burp her and change her diaper if necessary. By this point (hopefully) the little terrorist is falling asleep, so we carefully place her in her crib (pre-heated with a warm heating pad) and cross our fingers that she won’t wake up in the process.
• Eat dinner. Clean dishes. Open mail, fold laundry, re-fill diaper and bum-wipe containers, and enjoy a short period of quiet. Basically we wait for the baby to awaken for her last feeding around 9-10 pm.
• Get Peach out of bed and change her diaper. Feed her one last time, burp her and hopefully put her back to bed. If she doesn’t want to go to bed, sit with her until she falls deeply asleep before putting her back in her crib.
• Realize it’s now between 9:30 and 11 pm, time for us to go to bed. Retire for the evening.
• Be woken up a random intervals to the baby’s sleep cries of “AAAPP!” or “BAA-AA-AA!”. Stumble reluctantly out of bed to check she’s not choking or needing to be burped. Soothe her then put her back down. Go lie down again. 30 seconds after lying down be summoned with the “AAAPP!” or “WAAH-AAHH!” depending on the situation. Again relucatantly get out of bed and check on her. Burp her, put her back down, stumble back to bed. Repeat 2-5x before finally bringing baby Peach into bed with us. Miraculously the fussing and burping troubles end. Hmmmmm.

Saturday (just after midnight):

• Sleep until next round of “AAAPP!”, “BAA-AA-AA!” and/or “WAAH-AAHH!” cries tell us she’s getting ready to wake up for her nighttime feeding around 2-3 am. Try to ignore this as long as possible, then blearily fall out of bed and plod over to the crib. Pick up Peach, stumble to the changing station and change her diaper. Bring her to Mom who feeds her for the next 20-40 minutes. Mom is smart and has water and snacks nearby for her to munch on. Lie down in a haze, fitfully falling in and out of sleep as Mom talks to Peach and Peach helpfully yelps scaring the poop out of me every few minutes.
• Burp the little critter, put her back in the crib if she’ll let us, or more often leave her in bed with us as it’s less fighting and more conducive to getting an extra 27.35 milliseconds of sleep.
• Sleep until the next “AAAPP!”, “BAA-AA-AA!” and/or “WAAH-AAHH!” cries tell us she’s ready for her early morning feed around 6-7 am. Repeat prior process.
• All pass out until 9 or 10 am, when the feeding cycle starts again. This time I get up and go to the kitchen and have a snack myself, then bring something for Mom to eat and drink.
• Have a shower and get dressed. Take the baby from Mom so she can have a shower and do whatever she needs to do now.
• Get ready to go shopping or out where ever we’ve decided we’re going. Pick up the changing bag filled with diapers, blankets, wipes, sling and put Peach into the car seat. Get everything else we need and head out the door to the car.
• Crap, it’s time for lunch and we’re hungry! Grab a quick bite to eat out of the fridge or on the road.
• Snap the car seat into place and we’re off. Baby Peach falls asleep almost instantly. I wish I could do that.
• Go do our errands. We have 1-2 hours of time to do this before Peach wakes up and demands attention and food, so we try to plan things around her feeding cycle. We’re always behind schedule and usually rushing.
• Feed Peach on the road as required. This is usually accomplished in the parked car somewhere. Burp her and put her back into the seat or sling to continue our journey.
• Arrive home exhausted 2-4 hours later, having accomplished what normally would take 30 minutes.
• Feed Peach, try to put her to bed. Yeah right. More likely hold and entertain her for the next couple of hours – sitting in front of the TV or lying in bed wishing I could sleep. Have a snack as dinner will be a ways off yet.
• Prepare dinner…. while Mom is feeding/burping/changing/soothing Peach. When all that’s done and Peach is in her crib we eat. It’s now anywhere from 7:30 to 8:30 pm.
• Clean up dishes, do/fold laundry, prepare for tomorrow. Sit and veg out in front of TV for a few minutes waiting for next set of wailing. Oh yeah, try to go and write something on the blog or transfer photos from the camera to the computer so Mom can post them on her baby blog.
• Wait for baby Peach to summon us with her usual repetoire of yelps and calls. Change her diaper to help her wake up. Hand her to Mom for feeding, take her back for burping and putting back to bed.
• Go to bed ourselves – might be 10 or 11 pm now.
• Go through the same battle of trying to get her to sleep in her crib then give up and bring her into our bed. Sleeps like a lamb. Little monster!

Sunday (just after midnight):

• Repeat Saturday’s night events.
• Repeat Saturday morning. Perhaps go for a walk with the stroller, visit a friend or just hide out at home.
• Go through the same thing as Saturday evening. This time because I need to work Monday morning, I might just go sleep on the hide-a-bed in the living room if baby Peach is being particularly demanding. This means Mom gets to do all the work at night now, changing/feeding/burping and soothing Peach. Usually Mom will just leave Peach in the bed in my spot as it eliminates all the up and down of trying to get baby Peach to sleep in her crib.

And that’s our weekend. So we manage to get out and get some groceries so we can survive the coming week, and we might even have some time to ourselves to remind us of the life we once had. But in general we’ve just spent over 48 hours running our tails off but accomplishing not a lot.

Welcome to becoming a dad!