Daddy Guest Post

Weekends are a wonderful thing. Even if they are sometimes tiring as hell. I look forward to nothing more during the week than being able to spend two entire days with my wife and kids. During the week, my play-time with the kids is limited. The majority of my time in the morning is spent getting ready for work, and the majority of my time with them in the evening is getting them ready for bed. I still manage to have a lot of fun with my kids on weekdays, but nothing compares to the weekend. As probably most people do, I spend at least part of every day at work wishing that I was home instead. But the funny thing is, each Saturday, usually mid-afternoon, realizing just how exhausting it must be for Mary to be at home alone with the kids on weekdays.

Regardless of what time we manage to get him to sleep at night, the Peanut tends to wake up, without fail, sometime between 5:15 and 5:45 in the morning. This would be all fine and dandy if he was good about taking a nap sometime during the day (well -- theoretically anyway...I guess there's a good chance I'd still complain about getting up that early even if he did nap). But he isn't good about taking naps during the day, which just adds insult to injury. It's almost like his sole source of energy is from some invisible solar panel up on our roof (I say up on our roof because if the sun is up, even if he's in a dark room being rocked while a nice gentle soother is playing, he's giddy and playful, as though he's in the middle of a playground with jolting carnival music blaring nearby.)

So, without fail, every Saturday, around 1:30 in the afternoon, after I'm already tired from getting up, playing with and helping care for the kids, doing whatever errands we have to do for the morning, getting lunch and helping to get the Weeble down for her nap, just when I'm looking forward to a break -- just for a few minutes -- the Peanut suddenly gets his second (third?) wind and has the energy to go on a Babycrawl 5K. What's insane about all of this is that Mary is with me the whole time, and I still feel that way. I'm not alone with the kids. Maybe the Peanut inherited his ability to harness the sun's energy from his mom -- because as tired as I know being here during the week makes her, she's gotta be getting the energy to take care of them from somewhere.