So it begins

This morning marks the first time that Declan has gone downstairs to watch cartoons while I lay upstairs, still asleep and dead to the world. He was so excited to have found this, he woke me up to tell me. Thanks, i guess...

Nap tip no. 1

I've been having some trouble getting the little mister down for naps. He eventually does take them, but it's a battle...bribery didn't work so well, so...

Nap tip number 1?

Exhaustion...


...worked like a charm.

Routine Routine Routine

One thing I've learned only after a short while is that routine is key. Something else is that I need to play off of his mood. Yesterday, after nap, he was groggy and a little grumpy, but it was time to go to the library. So getting ready to go created a little tension for him and for me. That can be corrected not by yelling and time outs, but by simple schedule changes. We could have gone in the morning.

The balance regarding schedule can be a little frustrating, but I think we'll settle in just fine. I was thinking of introducing arts and crafts into the mix and I wanted to do it in the morning, but throwing my schedule against it too may require a little adjustment. So this week is experiment week, I believe.

I have my things I want/need to do, he has his things he wants/needs to do and we have our necessary things to do together, like learning, arts and crafts, getting out of the house, etc., so it's going to take a nice juggling act to settle in to the happy medium, but once we get there, we should be ok.

I'll check in later to let you know how it goes today with a heavy Dad list of things to do on my docket today...

The morning so far...

So it's still morning one and I can tell I'm gonna need to get a tightrope and a long stick because it's gonna be a balancing act. I need to find the time to work on the necessary things around the house (i.e. clean, laundry, make the appropriate lists, etc.) and I have a little voice saying "Daddy come look at this" while he's having his play time.

But more on the balancing act later. We said goodbye to a (blurry) Mommy as she left and as an added bonus, we found a roley-poley. Aside from that, on our first day (which is mostly a pajama day), we watched the morning Curious George with breakfast and also Sid the Science Kid. Then the TV went off and it was learning time.

We went over the upper and lower case letters and he did great. The typical confusion ensues regarding the lower case mix ups, g/q, b/d, r/f...no worries though, he's doing awesome. We also learned the words, 'the', 'be' and 'it'. Letter sounds were A+ too.

This afternoon there's a trip to the library and maybe a quick stop for groceries, but that'll all be after nap, so wish me luck and I'll check in soon.