Father's Day

I have discovered that when it comes to kids I expect the worse. This weekend my wife, Helen, took a two day class in Fabric Arts in Columbus, which is an hour and half drive from our house. So she was out of the house by 7am and not expected to be home until 7pm. This left me with the two boys for the whole weekend.
Our typical day is me getting up with Charlie after 7am. Then Helen getting up anytime after 9am with Luke. Then she heads to work by 10am. We usually visit once in the afternoon and she is home by 7pm. But a priest does not work typical 9-5 hours, their schedule changes from week to week, depending on evening meetings and services. It demands for more flexibility with the family schedule, but also allows for more family time. For this weekend there wasn't going to be much family time with mom.
Our first plans for the weekend were to all get up with mom and go to Columbus, do something for four hours in the morning, visit mommy for lunch, do something in the afternoon for four hours, pick mommy up after her class, and go home. I just needed to fill in the what to dos. Taking in to consideration Charlie's need for activity, Luke's need for naps, both needs for food, Luke's fussiness for the carseat, plus consider the weather and plan accordingly. On top of these new demands on me, Sunday was Father's Day.
All in all the weekend was pretty pleasant. I decided that getting up early with mommy was too much. So Helen drove separately from us and the kids slept in. Letting your kids get as much sleep as they will take can make all the difference. We didn't have any meltdowns even though mommy wasn't available. Luke got his naps on the trips between Columbus and home, which cut down his carseat fussiness. And even when Charlie got a nap he wasn't up until midnight either night, which is usually the case with him.
Saturday we took grandma to Danville and went to a garage sale in the morning. After visiting mommy, we went to the zoo for a couple of hours. At this stage Charlie dictates where we go, for this trip it was the tigers first and with out stops between. Then the elephants to see how junior has grown. Next was the apes and monkeys to see the new arrivals. Last was the playground. Luke seemed as interested in the other people and kids as he was the animals. After the zoo I had to drive around since the boys fell asleep. Which wasn't so bad since there are parts of Columbus I haven't seen. Once they slept long enough, we stopped by the Laughing Ogre, a comic book store. Charlie is taking after his dad with his interest in super heroes. He takes after his mom, because most of the heroes he is interested in are women, that's whole other post. After we picked up the latest, we headed back to see mommy and then drove home, in which Luke took a third nap, yeah! no fussiness.
Sunday went even smoother. We went to church, without mommy, crazy. Luke was a model child. And Charlie is showing more signs of being okay with other adults. He chose to hangout with Megan Aebi, who was filling in for the usual kid summer attendant, instead of hangin' with dad and Luke. After church we headed to Columbus to visit mommy, Luke napped. Then we went to COSI, science museum. Charlie was very understanding and patient when we had to wait for Luke to be done playing, before we could do something Charlie wanted to do. Both kids enjoyed watching rats play basketball. Both slept afterwards on the trip home, so no Luke carseat fussiness. I probably did more whinning in my head thinking about the weekend then the two boys actually did all weekend. It was a pretty good Father's Day. Oh yeah, my wife got me the cordless grass trimmer I've been looking at.

TheBoys

TheBoys
Originally uploaded by hssb1125

Here they are. My two sons.

The Second One Is Faster

Luke is going on ten months now. He already has four teeth. He's crawling, but working on the pulling himself to standing and walking behind push toys. He talks up a storm, baby talk that is. Doesn't mind when others hold him and doesn't seem to have seperation anxiety, unless he's tired and spots mom or dad peeking in on him. He will play on his own for large blocks of time, definitely more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time; more like thirty minutes. Life is different with Luke and it seems to zip by.

We don't seem to take as many pics or video footage. I know we have two kids now, but Charlie doesn't require as much oversight. We ae splitting our time between two now. I think we love him as much as Charlie. Maybe it's the newness of having a child, being a new parent has warn off. It definitely is getting easier.

I find more time to ride these days. With Charlie it took two years before I could even think about starting a regular riding schedule. Luke is nine months along and I've riden more this Spring than the past three years. And hey, this my second posting this Spring.