John on: "Boys Day Out"

On Sunday I headed to San Diego to go to my dear friend Leigh's bridal shower. I left at 8am and got home at 9pm. It was the longest John has had to watch Jack. I knew my husband would handle it with ease, but I was still sad to leave my boys for a whole day. So while my pictures from the day comprised of this...

...what was John doing with our son? I'll let him tell you.

Where the Hell is Mommy?

Well, Jack didn’t quite understand that Mommy had a party to go to in a magical place called La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya, he didn’t get that either. Yeah, one of many things in the future I won’t be able to explain to him.)

Lisa left early in the morning to head south so she could spend some time with her folks before the afternoon wedding shower for Auntie Leigh. This left me with the boy for a solid full day. Something I’ve never tackled solo before. Luckily, Sunday morning meant Studio City Farmers Market, which is a solid Jack outing. I got him prepped, dressed him in solid earth-tones and a sweet hoodie. And then I added a flair with the red socks. A sharp look:

I don’t have any pics from the Farmers Market, because I didn’t want to take any chances without backup. I wasn’t into the idea of juggling fresh strawberries, cauliflower, and Pink Lady apples along with an unhappy Jack. (Mind you, Jack’s been really pissy lately due to his molars coming in. It doesn’t take much to set him off.) I gave him a bag of Clementines to play with and moved swiftly from stand to stand. Didn’t have time to see if Angelina Jolie was showing up that day with her brood. Didn’t even have time for banter with the large-chested Gypsy girl who “sells” us the amazing Bolani bread every week. (I put “sells” in quotes, because it verges on “swindles,” because we can’t walk away from that stand without dropping 20-30 bucks. On bread. She’s that good.)

Little boy did me the courtesy of falling asleep on the ride home, which made for an easy morning nap. I held him and watched the Lakers game while he slept. That worked out well.

Knowing how Jack operates I knew I was going to have to venture out to a park after lunch. We went to one I hadn’t been but once and surprise, surprise, it was crowded on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. Jack crawled all over the place, and I tried to do as little “heli-parenting” as I could stomach. I’m a little quicker to jump to Jack’s aid when he really doesn’t need it than Lisa. But I tried my best to walk the thin line of letting the boy be the boy, and letting Jack split his face open on the day Daddy’s on watch. It was tough. Then, just in case I wasn’t sure he was all little boy, he got as dirty as he possibly could in the span of 10 seconds, which resulted in my favorite pic of the day:

Passed out again on the ride home. (Amazing for a kid who constantly seemed like he was going to spontaneously combust in his first few months in the car.) The nap thing I have down.

At the end of the day, Jack was more into entertaining himself. From the piano to the hamper to his basket of puzzles, which he scattered across his room. We got to dinner pretty easily. It was from dinner on that began the series of missteps.

First, at dinner, he was successfully eating his healthier baby food and some strawberries, when he pointed to the area where we have the bread. Obviously indicating he wanted some cheesy bread, I immediately jumped to, abandoning the healthier alternative for the cheesy bread. So when I went back to the fruit et al, he was disinterested. Because there was cheesy bread. Then he decided the cheesy bread was better for throwing. And since the fruit ship had sailed, so had dinner along with it. Took my lumps and retreated to bath time.

Looking back, the secret to bathtime/bedtime is to be a step or even two ahead of Jack. I was instead a step off. I began undressing him before I had his PJs out or his sleep sack laid out. Which resulted in me having to change gears in the middle of battling him to remove his clothes. He let me know that he didn’t approve, and from there, I allowed Jack to dictate the tempo instead of taking the lead. The book progression went out the window. Half way through “Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb” I remembered I hadn’t added Jack’s bath song to my iPhone. Another misstep. So I ended up singing “Under Pressure” to him a cappella. I almost forgot his towel. I was getting by. Barely. My hope was the bath would calm him down.

And it did. Temporarily. But once he was done, he was done quick. When I tag team bath time with Lisa, I pull Jack from the water and “shake, shake, shake” as we call it. Then hand the boy to Lisa who has Jack’s towel in receiving formation, swooshes it around him, and whisks him away to bedtime. So I did part one swiftly, only to realize part two wasn’t standing there. So I’m holding a wet, pissed off kid and grabbing for a towel even though my clothes had ultimately done most of the work for the towel. Got him dry and, as he fought me through getting dressed, I thought to myself, Lisa must be really, really good at this.

heart,
john