Today Allison spent the entire day in Connecticut. This was probably the first all full day alone with Eva so far. Don’t get me wrong I am a very competent father. I was up changing diapers right away and now that Eva is on rice cereal and diaper duty is a little more odoriferous, shall we say, I can still hack it like a pro. But an entire day watching after this little person who is in need of a ton of attention. Well, that was the challenge. But I was up for it.
First off, I was not baby sitting, Eva is my daughter and as a good Dad I was taking care of her for the day. Allison fed Eva before she left so Eva was both satisfied and a mess. She likes to move her head from side to side as soon as the spoon gets close to her face, it makes for a very messy face. So for me the first thing I did was Tubby Time. Tubby Time is my thing, Allison feels that I should have tubby time because I am not home all day and this is a good bonding thing between Eva and me. Okay, I will go with that. My knees on the other hand are not a fan of tubby time.
Eva really likes the water. Our faucet and hot water is very stable so I now sit Eva in her little tub and fill it up so she can splash with the water from the faucet. She likes to splash. She also likes playing with toys when she is in the tub. So whenever I see a new Munchkin Rubber Ducky I get it for her. She has a ton of them and when she can take a tub in the big tub there are gonna be about 15 duckies in there with her.
After tubby time I got Eva dressed and we played for a while. We watched Transformers Animated (The only show I let her watch, she’s gotta learn about the Transformers sometime.) Eva also played in her jumparoo.
She finally got tired and took a good little nap. She woke up in time for lunch and so I fed her a bottle and then attempted to feed her some food. Eva does not eat when I give her food unless Allison is in the room, so this was gonna be interesting. I tried a few spoonfuls and we were getting nowhere. Eva does like her sippy cup of water though, she tears through that like you wouldn’t believe. So I got an idea. Her rice cereal and milk was pretty watery, so I poured it into her sippy cup and she did a really good job of eating her rice cereal. Sneaky, yes, wrong, well I am not sure about that.
After lunch we got ready to go to the Zoo. I love taking Eva to the Zoo. Correction, I love taking Eva to the zoo in the off season. The place was a madhouse. I see some of the worst behavior in the zoo. People are just terrible sometimes. Banging on the glass, roaring at the lions. Just a bunch of knuckleheads.
The big draw to the zoo was the brand new White Lion that debuted on Earth Day. He is just getting used to being part of the pride, (there are two other female lions and the zoo hopes to breed them as the females carry the white lion gene.) I’m sure that he is very beautiful but he was pretty sleepy and he rolled all over the wood chips so his fur was full of wood chips. But his eyes are so light colored and beautiful. I look forward to going to see this lion more over the years.
After the zoo we zipped over to my comic book shop to pick up my subscription, then it was over to the mall to get some Fish Oil Capsules. Eva was asleep most of that time.
We finally got back home and played a bit more and then it was dinner time. I fed her a bottle which she took pretty easily, then I attempted food. She took a couple of bites of peas and then had no interest in the rice cereal or the water, so I didn’t push it. I got her ready for bed, read her the nightly story and said prayers. I left the room and went to clean up from dinner. Eva cried the entire time (about 10 minutes.) I tried feeding her a little more milk but she wasn’t having any of it so I put her back in bed, went to the other room and did some more cleaning up, when I came back she was asleep. So pretty easy day overall. (Well, it didn’t feel easy at some points but how can you stay frustrated with this kid, I ask you, how?)