Daddy Daycare..week 1-

This was my first week back to work, which met it was T's first week with baby K. He will normally have her M, W, Th only, but this week he had her Tues too. I made a promise to myself to NOT call and check in on him. And I lived up to it! So very proud of myself. I would call every night as I left work, only to see if T needed me to stop for anything on the way home..here is a recap of our successes and failures of the week...

Monday daddy and baby had their first outing together. He took her for rabies shots..well she didn't get the shots the cat did! So his first outing with her and he also had the cat. - Overall a successful day

Tuesday they chilled at home all day..making a pretty big mess and leaving it for Mommy to take care of when she came home. Even though I needed to cook dinner/have baby K time/get ready for work the next day. The "reason" for the mess was that Daddy napped when baby napped - Successful, but needs to work on the clean up

Wednesday T had a dentist appt and I convinced him that baby K could go with him...my words "She'll sleep in the truck the whole way up there and stay asleep during your appt, don't worry about it"....20 mins into his cleaning he had a SCREAMING baby at his side. Easy enough to fix, he made her a bottle and the receptionist took her out front and fed and played with her. After his appt he called me while I was at work and I convinced him (yet again) to come visit me. They spent about an hour at my office. Baby K was totally awake and alert this time (last time she slept the whole visit). So as I was bringing them up to my floor in the elevator I looked down at my little one in her car seat and freaked a little bit...

K- T she isn't buckled in!
T- (removing the blanket that is covering her) yes she is
K - No honey- those straps go over her shoulders!
T - Oh...I didn't know that, sorry
K - Oh my god! If you slammed on the breaks she could go flying!
T - (looking embarrassed) Sorry, I didn't know

He had the straps that go over the shoulders and the straps that go along the waste line under her arms. Poor guy, lesson learned for us both. I always put her in her seat, so I guess I should have showed him this prior. All is good now, no harm done. - Successful once some educating was completed...potential was there to be a failure but we corrected it.

Thursday....oh Thursday....first of all let me say her whole sleep pattern got screwed up this week. I'll explain more later.. When I got up for work at 5:40 on Thursday she was already up. I made her a bottle and changed her diaper. She was not interested in eating..just wanted to be up for the day. Since I needed to get in the shower, I put her back in her crib and went and told T that she was up, but I was getting in the shower. He got up, took her down to the Sun room and they began their morning routine of looking out the windows and greeting the day. She was her happy cheery self when I came down after my shower. By this point she was ready to eat, so I gave her a bottle before I left and on my way I was...so when my day was done I called T as I had done each day, I was going to stop and get Chinese and wanted to know what he wanted...when he answered he was stressed, upset, overwhelmed. All I could hear was a screaming baby..upon asking him what he wanted his response was "Order whatever you want - click"...UhOh...naturally I raced home. A little over an hour later i walk in the door to find a frustrated T washing bottles and a very upset baby K laying in her pack-n-play crying.

K - Has she been like this a lot today?
T - since 8:30 this morning all she has done is cry
K - All day? Any naps? Bottles?
T - a 20 minute nap when I took her for a ride, she has eaten but then just cries again. No other naps. I've changed her diaper, her clothes, sang to her, carried her, put her down..nothing just crying. (and then off he went up to the bedroom and closed the door)

I made her a bottle and went and picked her up....silence. (Not another peep out of her the rest of the frigin night!) I fed her a bottle, and went up to her room and rocked her for a bit until she dozed in my arms. When I put her down she woke back up, but wasn't crying so I left her there so we could have dinner. She was fine. After dinner I ran her a bath...fine the whole bath (but she usually is), took her out of the bath - total quiet (she usually screams), got her ready for bed...gave her another bottle and she was out cold. I mean dead to the world out cold. This was 8pm...want to know when she woke up? 7:30am the next day! HOLY F'ing crap! This kid was wiped out. Of course I slept like shit because I started waking up around 1am in anticipation of her waking up. By 2am I was checking on her (ya know to make sure she was breathing). So by the time my alarm went off at 5:40 I was exhausted!

Bottom line...she was sick of T and T was sick of her. 4 full days together can be overwhelming..just ask any new Mom. I had several days like this with her too, and then T would walk in the door and take her and she would be golden. - A total disaster of a day, not because of any ones faults, just because babies will be babies. A lesson T learned was ask for help or take it when it is offered. His Mom had called him around 11am (cause she calls to check on him daily - see that and I didn't!) and offered to come help him and he turned her down...wrong answer.

So about her sleep pattern..for about 2 weeks now she has been sleeping in 4 hour windows at night...put her down around 8pm and she gets up at midnight and 4am to be changed and fed, and then sleeps till around 7am and gets up for a few hours before napping starts...

Well Mon-Wed nights she was getting up ever 2 hours again! Now I shouldn't care since T is getting up with her now, except that I wake up each time and have to wake him up because he doesn't hear her, so 2 hour windows suck. This got me thinking...I asked T some questions about her naps. The problem was that he was letting her just sleep sleep sleep all she wanted. I explained the schedule I had her on and that he should try to stick to something similar in order to increase her sleep windows at night. I was keeping her up from when she up in the am until around 9-10. Playing with her, doing belly time, getting her dressed for the day, etc...then she'd have a nap for 30mins to 1.5 hours. Get up, change, play a little, eat, and then down for a long nap (@3 hours (MAX)), get up change, eat, play for about 2 hours, (occasionally another hour nap will get squeezed in here) change, bath, eat, bedtime...and this gets her to sleep longer at night. After i explain this to him he says "I don't like to wake her up". Well do you like getting up every 2 damn hours? Cause I don't.

Any way...long post I know, if you read this far great thanks..if you haven't bite me~

We are off to the Easter bunny today...