Monday, June 22, 2009

Some Insights

I finally have made time to read. And now it's my second favorite thing to do. I have read a couple of books already, a couple of mystery thrillers: Coffin Dancer by Jefferey Deaver and Fatal Voyage by Kathy Reichs. They were both great books and I often stayed up too late to read a few more pages. Now I'm reading a Skeleton Crew by Steven King. I've read The Mist - great story but I didn't like the ending. But as the husband said, there's no better way to end that story. Now I am reading The Monkey, and I'm surprised I haven't had nightmares. Stories about children's toys gone bad really scare me. Always have.

I installed Quicken on my laptop and have started to track our finances beginning in June. I am super excited about this it's almost scary. Maybe I should have been an accountant. I want to track every single penny we spend. Hopefully I won't drive my husband crazy. On the plus side, this will help us decide whether we're financially stable enough to have one of us become a stay-at-home parent.

I'm on Facebook, but not on Twitter. I checked out the twitter page today for the first time, and it really stressed me out. It took me a while to get on Facebook, and now I love it. I'm always thinking of new people to look up. However, I don't think I can handle another online social network application/website/whatever you call it.

The Peanut has woken up only once during the night for 4 of the last 5 nights. Wow! We are excited. I, on the other hand, wake up a lot more, for various reasons. We finally stopped bedsharing and put him back in the bassinet in our room and the first night, much to our surprise, he only woke up once. I woke up 3 times, because I was used to it and I really needed to nurse. But I waited it out and only had to feed once. Monkey was really annoying last night, scratching at the door, and whining to come into our room. We've been kicking the cats out of our room because Monkey and Fattie keep jumping into the Peanut's crib. Monkey is bi-polar and she could easily scratch the Peanut and Fattie is, well, he's almost 30 lbs. So if my body is not waking me up, it's the kitties. But at least it's not the Peanut and that's a good thing.

The husband survived his first day back at work. He's quite bummed that his paternity leave is over. He did an awesome job taking care of the Peanut and I'm so glad that he got to stay at home. I think all daddies should stay at home for a few weeks. And if you live in CA, you can even get paid for some of the leave. I had my concerns when I first went back to work and left the boys alone. I was mostly worried about the Peanut missing me and the husband not knowing how to soothe him. The Peanut did miss me but the husband found his own way to soothe the Peanut and everything worked out. Now I see my husband going through the same emotions that I did when I went back to work.

2 comments:

Lint said...

Actually, I don't think all daddies should stay at home alone with a new kid, because not all daddies are like your husband. It's wonderful and a little unusual that he gets along so well with the Peanut at such a young age. I think I know more daddies who weren't able to understand their kid so well until the kid was old enough to talk and have other interests besides eating and sleeping, like until 3 or 4 years old. So consider yourself lucky!

Cleaty said...

He's a pretty good daddy. Now, I think part of the reason that he did so well was because he was left to fend for himself almost immediately. He was allowed to make mistakes on his own and he was able to gain confidence as he invented his own techniques. We overlapped for a couple of weeks and we were going to transition over slowly, but I ended up doing everything during that time because I couldn't stop being a mommy with the impending end of maternity leave.

Initially the husband took paternity leave because he needed a break from work, not because he wanted to take care of the Peanut. But by week 2 or 3, I definitely saw a change in his outlook. And since the Peanut was a lot more interactive by then (compared to week 1), it definitely helped. The husband actually didn't do very much for the first 3 months, he rarely even slept in the same room with us (funny how he doesn't remember this). But he's more than made up for that. :)

But thanks for the nice compliments! I'll be sure to relay the info!