I remember when Mondays used to be my blog catch up day. That’s when I’d drop a buncha words on ya’ll about what had gone down in our house, and with our family, over the previous 72 hours.
But Mondays have, strangely, become my busiest day of the week. Time just seems to fly by and suddenly it’s school pickup time, we have a practice and/or game to get to, and I still haven’t had a chance to sit down and do a weekend summary.
So, a belated one on a Tuesday. Again.
This past weekend was pretty good. Mostly because, as I shared on Friday, we were watching one of our young nephews for the weekend. And Friday daytime was reserved for just me and little M. He’s a really good, sweet kid and we had a lot of fun. We see him about once a week, so he was comfortable with all of us to begin with. He loved playing with the girls when they were around. He and I had a lot of fun together, but it took until Friday evening for him to start climbing up on me and getting right into my face, wanting to mimic the noises I made or try to grab my nose, glasses, or lips. I felt that’s like when I was really Uncle D, someone who is fun and makes him feel safe. We had a stretch each day over the weekend where he would spend about 15 minutes getting right up in my face and messing with me. A couple times he had me laughing so hard I was crying.
The funniest part of the weekend came when we had to deal with his hair. He is African American, and S and I have never had to deal with black baby hair. My sister-in-law left us a detailed list of what products to use, in what order, and how to manage it. I think we did a halfway decent job, the key being halfway. We didn’t make him look like a lunatic or anything, but neither was it as neat as his mom can do.
(As an aside, my sister-in-law too struggled for while figuring out the best way to deal with his hair. One of S’s patient’s mothers is a black woman who was raised by white parents. When she heard my s-i-l was struggling, she put together a care package of products to use, a place to take little M for haircuts, etc. It was a really nice gesture. As the mom told S, “I love my parents, but they had no idea what to do with my hair. It didn’t look right until I got to college and was around some other black folks.” Seems like there should be a whole support network for white people who adopt black kids to teach them how to deal with the hair issues.)
He took a two-hour nap for me Friday, which was awesome. He slept perfectly three of the four nights we had him, and that fourth night he just woke up wet and needed to be changed then went back to sleep. He’s working on his two top teeth, so he was a little cranky at times, but nothing that Motrin didn’t help with.
All-in-all, it was a really good weekend. He’s a lot of fun to be around and it reminded me how that stage was one of my favorites with our girls. The times when they are crawling and interactive, but not yet walking so you can still pin them in a confined area of the house when you need to. It was also a reminder of how having a little one around just destroys your house. Not that our house is always neat, necessarily, but we were dodging baby toys and binkies and books on the floor all weekend. And stepping in wet spots from his teething drool. Yuck! Saturday night the girls and I were looking at some old pictures from when they were little and we laughed when pretty much every picture of the living room showed a floor that was just littered with their messes.
As fun as the weekend was, it was nice to pass him back to his mom when she got home. I’m glad we’re well past the diapers and making bottles and screaming kids at bedtime stages. We just have to deal with two pre-teens who are shitty to each other about 75% of the time, girls who burst into tears for no reason, and rooms that are complete disasters. No biggie.
Oh yeah, we also had a couple other kids stay over on Thursday. We were helping out some friends who both had to be out of town Thursday. So we had six in our house for one night. S said we just needed to add one more and it would have been like her house when she was growing up. Yikes!