Retreat

I'm on retreat this weekend. Here:

For the next two mornings, when I wake up, I'll sit on the porch with my coffee and enjoy this view:

 I'm sure my time at the beach will be filled with prayer and contemplative meditation.  Hopefully I'll write some blog post that will change peoples lives.  Or, I'll just spend most of my time doing this:

I might feel ambitious and take a run past this:

 But lets be honest.  On this retreat, I'll spend most of my time doing this:

See you Monday!

Daddy's Day!

Please welcome guest blogger and husband extraordinaire Brett to The Things I Said I'd Never Do! This is the first of what I am sure will be many posts from St. Brett the Awesome giving his take on raising Max.  

Greetings Blogosphere!  I recently asked St. Laura the Tolerant (it might not seem like much of a nickname, but you should see the shit she tolerates from me) if I could do a guest post on her blog, and she was nice enough to say yes!  So get ready for lots of ramblings about Max from his Daddy’s perspective.

Thanks to our crazy work schedules Laura and I didn’t get to share a vacation day this 4th.  My vacation day was on Thursday, and hers was on Monday.  I’m going for my masters degree right now and Laura offered to take Max to daycare so I could work on my homework.  “Don’t be silly!” I said.  “I can take care of the little man!”  Around the 1:00 AM feeding before the big day it hit me.  I’ve never done this before!  Now I consider myself a pretty involved dad, and I like to think I’m the rule rather than the exception, but at that point I realized that I’ve never spent an entire day alone with my son.  I spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling with eyes as big as Maxwell’s.

Now ladies, I have ENORMOUS respect for what moms go through, both in labor and taking care of little ones, and I’ve never met another dad that doesn’t agree.  Laura was an absolute champ during a very long labor, and even though she was recovering herself she gave everything she had to our brand new little boy.  It was a big change for both of us and I did everything I could to help her and to take care of Max, but two weeks later I was back to work and what amounted to a 10 hour vacation four days a week!  We’re a pretty modern family, but we very quickly fell into pretty traditional roles.  Laura keeps Max alive while I try to make some money and beat potential kidnappers to within an inch of their lives with a baseball bat (Seriously.  Guys think about this kind of thing a lot.  I even have a special hiding place set up for Laura and Max while I get my Ninja on).

By the time Laura came home that evening I’m happy to report that Max was alive and happy and other than a huge pile of soiled laundry the house was in pretty good order!  We even made it down to have lunch with Mommy and Max got his first trip to Radio Shack!  Apparently soldering irons are hilarious!  We had a great day, but it was EXHAUSTING!  To you stay at home moms out there, my hat’s off to you.  To you stay at home dads out there, way to go.  It’s a constant balancing act for us modern dads.  We’ve got to work hard to support our family, but we don’t want to miss our little ones’ babyhood.  To all those out there making it work, congratulations!  With the help of St. Laura the Tolerant I think we’re doing a pretty good job.

Surviving Day Care.

The first two days of Day Care have been surprisingly stress free. I'm probably shooting myself in the foot for saying so but it's true. A fair bit of organization has helped.  The night before I get all bottles, breast pumps, extra clothes and lunch packed and ready to go. I even make sure the coffee machine is ready, down to my travel mug under the spout so I just have to hit "brew". Brett gets Max ready and I get myself ready so we can be out the door at the unholy hour of 6:30AM.  Even the drive is mildly pleasant. Max usually screams on car rides but the past two mornings he's been asleep the whole time, allowing me to catch up on world events courtesy of NPR. (It's not quite the same without Carl Kasell).

(please pardon crummy iPhone picture)

Dropping Max off has also been easy. I feel like a bad mom because I didn’t cry.  So many friends talked about how they cried for hours  after dropping off their baby for the first time. Not me.  I think I was too exhausted to cry. We are still not making progress on the sleep issue. Max, however, wasn’t very happy I was leaving. He gave me the wet eyed frown this morning and actually buried his head my shoulder when his teach went to take him.  There was some guilt on my end, but it was more that he was crying and I wasn't.  I was feeling guilty for not feeling guilty.  Catholic much?

I'm really happy with the day care (or school, which is what I call it to make it sound better).  The teachers are wonderful and of all the times I've stopped by unannounced not once was there a screaming child. In just two days most of the teachers know Max, not just the ones in the infant room. Another plus is that I don't have to go all day without seeing him.  During lunch I just walk down the hall, out the door and across a small parking to give my Little Man some lunch.  There is even a little comfy room where I can nurse him. I'm sure my feelings about going back to work would be much more negative if I didn't have such an ideal situation. Plus, when I came to get him at the end of the day, he was all smiles!

While I know there are going to be bad days, I hope this is a sign of things to come. I've even learned one really important lesson in all of this.  If you are a working Mom who is able to nurse their child during the day....be sure to have an emergency change of clothes in your office. Massive milk stains (or worse) aren't professional.

Better Day

Today Max was a totally different kiddo.  Lots of smiles and coos. Little fussing.  Going down for naps without a fight. Displaying Truthiness as a Colbaby.

Also, in a major breakthrough, he decided he wasn't going to hate his Bumbo anymore!

Note the new onesie.  Max decided to pee on truthiness.

These are the days that make me melt with joy.

Yesterday was a good day

Max slept until 8!

When we got up, we played "Flying Baby"

Which Max loved!

But then wasn't so sure about.

Then, for the first time, Max started to bat at his toys with his arms!

It was a gorgeous day....

...so we headed downtown, starting at my favorite place in the world.

Then we walked downtown and ate the best burgers ever.  From there we headed to City Market to watch the kiddos play in the new fountain in Ellis Square....

...and cuddle with Mommy

We closed out Max's day with 5PM mass and an early bedtime.  Mom and Dad closed out the day with a thrown together dinner and Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

 Go Hawks!!


It was definitely a good day!