Day 26

I had to spend a few hours in my sons room this morning, as he woke up right before my wife's alarm went off. Sometimes when he is so upset and won't fall asleep, one of us sleeping on the floor next to him is the only thing that will calm him down. After he calmed himself down, he slept for another couple of hours. I knew it was time to wake up when some of his toys and clothing started hitting me about the face and torso. That's what I get for trying to get a few extra minutes of sleep while he was trying to tell me to get up.

I forgot to call ahead and register him for "Baby Storytime" at the local library. Even though I'm sure we would have been fine just showing up, I didn't want to be that guy. We would have also been in quite a rush, so I figured we could just start next week. We have our regular storytime on Thursday, so I hope to straighten it all out then.

While he had his breakfast, I watched last night's episode of Breaking Bad. If you watch it, you know it's a fantastic show. While the content isn't exactly for children, one particular scene caused my son to stand up and point at the TV. Sure enough, there were drug-sniffing dogs on the screen! After they disappeared, he went back to his normal business of picking up toys and organizing them by color or type.

I was supposed to do my final long training run of 8 miles on Saturday. However, my Saturday consisted of waking up early for our yard sale, taking one dog to get his haircut; taking my son to swimming lessons; taking the other dog to get her nails clipped; cleaning up the yard sale; packing, transporting, and setting up my drums and P.A. to a gig on the other side of town; announcing a high school soccer game; and playing the aforementioned gig. I don't mean to whine, but there really wasn't much time for an 8-mile run. Sunday I just didn't feel like it, and I had to work super late at the Phillies NLDS game that night. Anyway, I tried to take care of that today, but it started raining about 3 miles in. I planned ahead and decided to just do laps around the neighborhood, so we weren't stuck in the rain for very long. Oh well. There's no sense trying to cram it in now. If I wasn't ready before this week, I won't magically be in better shape because of a few more miles.

I showered, and then we ate lunch. We still have many leftover items even after a relatively successful yard sale, so I thought I'd give Cash Converters a try. My wife and I have A LOT of unnecessary CDs and other media that we have been trying to get rid of with varying success, so I grabbed them along with several obsolete (to me) electronic devices. Since I couldn't carry the boxes and my son at the same time, I didn't even bother taking them (the boxes, not my son) out of my trunk. The clerk was kind enough to not only go out and assess the items but also carry them in for me. What was once worth hundreds of dollars was valued at $10, but I didn't care; I just wanted it out of my house. Maybe I'll use it to buy myself a nice fat cheeseburger after the race on Sunday.

My son fell asleep soon after we left Cash Converters and made a quick stop at Goodwill to donate the items that were assigned no value. I drove to the parking lot of a nearby sports complex and let him sleep for about an hour before my car decided to just shut off (from accessory mode) on its own. While it started up again right away, it still may be something to watch. I've put over 150,000 miles on it in just a little over 6 years with very few problems. I knock on wood, but you never know...

We drove to Mommy's school and waited for her in the parking lot. My plan was for him to be awake when we got there so she would see him on the playground, but he decided he needed more sleep. It worked out for the best anyway, since hers was the first face he saw when he finally did wake up.

Days 23 and 24

Music class was relatively the same this week. My son has more interest in walking around than being part of the class, but he's not the only one. His "girlfriend" follows him around, and they seem quite content doing their own thing. He has begun consistently clapping at the end of each song or activity, and I think that is awesome. But there is no screaming, no crying, and no tantrums, so no complaints from Daddy.

After class we went to the Berkshire Mall. Our friends from the shoe store remembered my son as he walked by their store. He got some comments on his sweet Adidas Samba Classics at the GAP. He cheated on his girlfriend with an older woman at the famous "texting" fountain. He ate pizza from Famous #1 Ray's Original Pizzeria Plus (or whatever it's called). He made an old lady or two's day. He even found a fan in a twentysomething hair product kiosk worker. It's one thing if the guy was selling something he actually expected me to buy; this guy was definitely interested and said "he could watch him all day". Sure it's somewhat creepy, but I knew what he meant. The kid is cute.

-----

This morning I had my first taste of middle-of-the-night duty. He'd been sleeping through the night since my wife went back to work, and I've been thankful for that. At 3 o'clock this morning that all came to a screeching, er- screaming halt. It took roughly two hours to finally get him back to sleep, and then he woke up again for good "early" at 9. I used a combination or laying on the floor next to his crib, standing and rocking, sitting and rocking, and reasoning ("just go to sleep, already. you're exhausted! why can't you see that?"). I think it was the reasoning that did it.

Getting up early ended up being a good thing because it gave me to time to get in a run before lunch. There was a strange sunshower soon after we got home [followed by far too many rainbow pictures on Facebook - don't you people have jobs?!? ;-)], but my son was too busy enjoying most of a Wendy's hamburger and some grapes to notice.

For today's shower distraction, I tried a suggestion from my wife. Usually I put him in his crib and let him watch Yo Gabba Gabba!, but yesterday she noticed that he pointed and laughed at the puppies in the new Spooky Buddies commercial. We own the first four Buddies movies, so she thought he might be ready to watch and "appreciate" them. I figured he wouldn't truly understand the nuances of the franchise unless we started at the beginning, so I put in Air Buddies. He immediately identified, pointed and laughed at the puppies and didn't make any other sounds while I got undisgusting.

I had band practice in the afternoon, but Gram was relatively thrilled at the chance to watch him while we rehearsed. After I dropped him off at her house, I drove to school and was able to focus for the entire practice- that is, when I wasn't thinking about how weird it was to not have to keep an eye on him the entire time! Our big "gig" is in two days, so it was nice to be able to get so much work done.

Tomorrow is Friday, and we have no plans. We'll see what happens.