For a total of 10 days over a three week period, I was the daytime caregiver of my little guy. Ten things I learned as a new grandmother in charge of daycare:
1) Your daughter (son?) will remind you of yourself at times in her approach to things and at other times you will wonder where she gets such crazy ideas.
2) “Quality time” for working parents consists of two hours in the evening which also includes changing out of office clothes, sorting the mail, cooking dinner and watching some stupid reality show that has been TIVOed. If you don’t know what TIVO is, you are better off than the rest of the world because you actually have a life. The kid does get some eye contact time, some belly time and usually a diaper change in all of this. Morning quality time, while more peaceful, rarely lasts more than a few minutes before everyone is off and running to greet their day.
3) When taking a baby for the daily stroll you actually think about things like the breezes in the leaves, happy dogs with wagging tails, the sounds of the suburbs and approaching fall colors.
4) Don’t expect to get any lengthy sleep while you are there overnight. Especially if parents are trying to get baby to drop night feedings.
5) Most Daddies are not intuitive about babies and it is sometimes funny to watch the discombobulation.
6) The strangest songs will come back into your memory when you are talking to the baby and you will actually sing them to him…at least partly, if you can remember most of the words.
7) Bath time: Babies are slippery as hell when wet!
8) There is nothing more addictive than ANY drug imaginable as having a little guy (gal) curl up tight in your arms, look you straight in the eye, and then drift off to blissful sleep.
9) Baby smell is certainly the next addiction…didn’t want to shower when I got back home!
10) You will lose weight ( a little). Lifting baby up and down, getting up and down from the floor, pushing a stroller, going up and down the stairs dozens of times each day and forgetting to eat all contribute to this.
Hehe how true this list is! When my mom was here after my son was born, she lost quite a bit of weight. This likely explains why I've only put on 20 lbs with this pregnancy whereas I was easily at the 40+ lb mark with the first two towards the end.
ReplyDeleteTabor,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your amusing and informative list! Now I know what to look forward to if life goes in that direction. :)
Baby smell...losing weight...listening to leaves fall...sounds like heaven! I really do relate to the comment you left on my site on feeling at home where you live. Thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteOooh! I love babies. I "can" wait for my daughter to have one, since she is just fourteen, but my niece is having one and my nephew (not together) and I have told them, don't forget me. I want some baby time.
ReplyDelete