Saturday, 15 February 2014

The Boys Together - week 1

We’ve just finished the first week of a Slightly Mad Dad and his son being home alone together. On Monday Sane Mum became the Bread Winning Mum (BWM) and returned to the workforce leaving the boys together at home. Slightly Mad Dad called his blog just that because he thought he was mad being a stay at home dad and it was going to be pretty hard work.

How hard was it? A lot harder than I ever imagined! Monday was pretty good I started the day at 90% excited 10% scared on my sliding scale. We went to swimming lessons, had a sleep, we caught up for lunch with a couple of other dads in the park and we cruised around. This was pretty good. It was only about 4:30pm when the witching hour started and I was busy trying to get dinner organised and H was grizzling that the scale started to slide more toward scared. It’s around this time I started to look for the cavalry coming over the hill. Was it coming? Yes but only after dinner, bath and bottle and Mum arrived home from her own exhausting day to kiss H good night and put him to bed.

Come Tuesday I knew what I was in for a little more. BWM had meetings until late and wouldn’t be getting home until after H was in bed. This was something she was not happy about and is working hard to make sure she can get home to see H before he goes to bed. The boys were going to be together all day – no cavalry would be coming. In this case I started the day at 80% excited 20% scared. We were went for a run, had a sleep, we went to the shops, we kept busy and by the time he was down and out for sleep I was probably at 50% excited 30% scared and 20% exhausted.

Wednesday came and went with visits, sleeps, shops, play time. BWM had seen H for a few minutes in the morning as he woke up late and she only just made it home to see him as he fell asleep again. Despite me feeling exhausted at the end of the day I could see it was difficult for BWM because she had spent the last year spending everyday with her son and now things were changing. We were lucky that we could sit down each night and talk our way through our days, our anxieties and also our successes so that the feeling of where we were on the excited / scared (exhausted) scale could even itself back more toward the excited end.

We got through Thursday with the routine we had begun to establish. Morning walk, sleep and then off to Gymbaroo for some playtime in the afternoon all happened fairly smoothly.  Thursday though saw BWM come home early so she could spend some time with H and also I could go to rugby training. As she arrived home I was sitting at the table feeding H his dinner all dressed in my rugby gear with the scales tipping up towards the high 90s on excitement. I won’t go into the details of rugby (that’s for another blog) but it was so good to spend time with adults again after four days with so much contact with a child of nearly one.

On Friday morning H went to childcare for the day. The boys had been doing some great bonding all week and we’d been setting up our routines. Watching him go into childcare for the day was the hardest thing I have done in a longtime. From the moment he arrived he started to tense up and as we walked into the room he gripped me tighter and as soon as I put him down to play he cried and cried. What are my choices here? Stay and play and maybe make it worse or get out of there fast and trust the carers who work at the centre. I chose to get out fast – I didn’t want to be the parent who hung around and maybe makes it worse. It is quite distressing to walk out the door to your own child’s cries. As I drove away there was a tear of my own in sympathy for my son. Needless to say when I rang later he was running amuck outside very happily.


How did the first week rate then? As I said at the beginning I thought it was going to be hard. It was harder. Was it fun? Most definitely! Did I learn anything? I learnt lots (I now have many notes for more blogs – just need to the time to write them!). The best parts of the week though involved knowing I had the support of BWM and that together we are going to enjoy helping our son grow up this year.

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