Week 2 - Wednesday

Week 2 - Wednesday

The Honey List

With Francis’ first birthday fast approaching, Ananda left me a list of things to do today:

As you can see I got most of them done – and to be fair I did add some items myself, but it did lead to some dire consequences later on. Read on Dear Reader.

Boys Toys

Enough said really! Very helpful staff at Bunnings helping me lug the lawnmower onto my trolley and then into the car.

Connected

Despite having worked in a very high tech field (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource – to mention just one) – I’m a bit crap  at the whole inter-webbery  thing and  normally leave that sort of thing to Ananda. So it was with trepidation that I tried to set up the internet at our new house. Hey presto, by some fluke, it worked exactly like it said on the box!  Now that’s a first.

Battles Lost and Well,  Just Lost

I alluded to this sorry tale earlier, and whereas my victories were great and satisfying in crossing off many items on The List – I did pay the price later. You see, I forgot all about my spreadsheet for Francis and applied a moving Gantt analysis to his waking time this morning. Young Francis was obviously partying hard last night as he did not get up until 7:30am, and I kinda had to wake him so he could say goodbye to Mammy. 

Anyway, since he was up about 90 minutes later than normal, I reckoned that gave me license to let his morning nap slide by 90 minutes too. Things went swimmingly, and after shopping, he took like 5 minutes to go down for his morning nap at about 11:20am. “Daddy’s nailed this” I thought.

Things started getting a little lumpy after he woke up about 2pm, and I tried to feed him. I was full of fresh naïve enthusiasm about making him some nice new foods.

1)   Pasta with a red lentil/cheese/pea and sweetcorn sauce – Battle lost

2)   Plain Pasta – Battle lost

3)   Getting “creative” and turning above sauce into soup – Battle lost

4)   Giving in and trying one of those squirty things from the forbidden drawer – Battle lost

5)   Butternut squash hummus – a sight gain in terrority for two mouthfuls – but then Battle lost

6)   Liquid gold – battle lost

7)   Water – Battle lost

8)   Rice rusk from Forbidden drawer – eaten with accompanying gansta-rap dance

The Scene of the Battle of Lunch Time (Late Lunch)

This whole slaughter took more than an hour and I was trying to be as present and as patient as possible, but in the end I just gave up. 

We did some wandering around the sodden garden, checking out the dog prints in our new veggie boxes, and hanging up some laundry for about four or five extra rinses.

Soon it was time for afternoon naps and Daddy Milkies. 

Things went from lumpy to full-on custard. 

The latter went okay, although he has now learned how to squirt milk into my face and eyes from the teat on the bottle (I though those days once Ananda’s let down stopping being like Niagara falls). Such fun for him!

Anyway, I spent from 4pm until 5:10pm trying to get him to have milkies and take an afternoon nap.  Again Battle lost. I gave up when Ananda came home from work and I handed him over so I could go and play football – lost that battle too.

We discussed my naivety when I returned from football and it seems that I need to stick to his nap at 9:30-10am in the morning and 3-3:30pm time in the afternoon – no matter what time he gets up.  Also, trying to do stuff in the morning is not worth it, Francis is much more malleable in the afternoons

So tomorrow I’ll try something different – it’s called listening to my wife!

Popeye

As usual he ate his steamed spinach faster than we could get it into his hands. Can man survive on spinach alone………?

“Numbers – do you like numbers? Let’s talk numbers” :*

0 – poos.

6- the number of goals scored by Newcastle in their game this morning. Crikey.

3- the number of goals I let in in my football game

49,042 – spectators at the Newcastle game

2 – the number of spectators at my game

566-  Page views yesterday. Could I become the Justin Bieber of the Stay at Home Dad world?

* above quote from some cocaine fuelled high priced lawyer Ananda and I had a business meeting with in San Francisco – (picture Wolf of Wall Street)