I’m at the end of a 4-day jaunt with the little one, my first trip with just baby. There have been weeks when I’ve been out of town, leaving my wife with the kid; and there have been trips that baby mama has taken with the kid while I’ve stayed home. But between nursing, which went through part of year 2, and our schedules, I’ve not had the opportunity.
The circumstances of our trip, I’ll leave for some other analysis. But we’ve been in Hilton Head since Thursday, leaving on Monday. Since we have been here, we have: gone in the pool every day; gone to a children’s museum; gone to three dinners at restaurants; gone to the beach; rode a pedal bike (with training wheels); gone bike riding, with me in front and baby in a seat attached to the rear; gone to a big playground; gone to a harbor to see big boats; thrown all manner of things into all manner of bodies of water; seen cranes, egrets, alligators, rabbits, chameleons, crabs, and lots and lots of Spanish moss. It has been a busy few days.
And on the potty front, baby has had one minor incident in the house, a minor incident on the plane, and the rest success. There’s another airplane trip tomorrow, so we will see how that goes. I put him in a diaper for the flight, but then had to take it off in the plane to go pee – it’s a ‘just in case’ (read: poop) diaper.
It has been a pleasure for the vast majority of the trip. No meltdowns at all, sleeping until 6:30 or even 6:45, napped 3 of 4 days, bedtime has been late but never later than 8:30 or so. A doll. The cycles are getting shorter though, and today he was missing his mommy. I get the feeling that another day or two and the meltdowns would start coming, along with other forms of resistance. But this has been a really great trip on many fronts. I mean, there was that incident when we went to a ‘cook at your table’ Japanese restaurant, and the dude’s onion volcano exploded sideways with fire that burned a kid’s arm a bit. That was the most actual (as opposed to potential) danger I’ve felt since maybe the baby was even born. Seriously, I’m still edgy thinking about it, even though it turned out to be completely fine (even for the unfortunate kid).
I feel pretty close to the toddler now, even though I was somehow expecting some bonding or other that I don’t really think happened. But there is a form of trust that comes with having sole care of the little one, and I appreciate that. For example, I really wanted to put him under water in the pool (in the way that they taught us at swim lessons, not to just dunk him for the hell of it), but I ended up never really trying it because I think it would have made him believe that I would let him come to harm. Which is completely fine.
This all said, I’m looking forward to a little help and sharing the load a bit when I get home. Not just because it’s ‘work’ (though it is), but also because we’re both missing home a little bit. Of course, since I’m writing this all the day before I’m traveling again with him, tomorrow will naturally be a disaster, but so be it.