Week in review

With the first week of solo parenting in the books, it sounds like a good time for an update. That and a baby who likes to be awake all night gave me some time to write instead of sleeping. It has been a pretty crazy week with not a lot of sleep and lots of adventure. Well, not really but maybe a little.

There were times when I worked in food service that I wanted to be a cook for some fancy restaurant. Every once in a while, I read these reviews of the chefs at some of the restaurants downtown and it sparks that interest again. I can safely say that after this week alone, that desire is gone. On a normal week, I make breakfast and lunch for everyone in the house with the occasional dinner too. There is a good balance between preparing for the kids, the the wife and then myself. Directly after I clean up from the meal, it's time to start preparing lunch which is usually something for kids and something for adults. I started the week thinking that Gus would fill the spots allocated for Alison with his feeding and the balance would be okay. I was wrong. Turns out it takes roughly half the time to cook for Alison that it does to feed Gus a bottle. That shifts out me eating for the most part. It only takes three days of eating a handful of cereal for breakfast and some dinner before that becomes an issue. On the good side, it's helping my diet out pretty well.

Sleep. A magical word that I take for granted. Over the years, I've grown accustomed to only really needing five and a half hours a night. That, of course, is a minimum. This week, I have averaged closer to three... with an hour break in the middle for a feeding. This is only a two week deal so I've learned to be okay with that, even though I have been exhausted. The funniest part of that is today, I decided to go to bed early and went to sleep at 9pm. I heard a noise at midnight that I thought was a baby stirring and now my body thinks it has had enough. Now, I'm having a little trouble getting back down. I'm sure that I will be fast asleep soon as my usual bedtime approaches. One more week, though, and that will be an old story I tell the kids when they complain about how hard life is.

Now for the adventure. I went to Target tonight with the five kids. I had to get a few things before the large shopping trip this weekend. Not really a big deal because people do it all the time. The funny thing is that not a lot of dads do it. That became obvious when I started seeing wives shoot husbands dirty looks after seeing me lugging the cart around and football holding the baby. It was pretty funny. Okay, it was really funny. Funny enough that I did a few laps just to watch the dirty looks and elbow nudges. That's all. Solo parenting with five kids gives new definition to the world adventure. That's a good thing because I don't know that my exhausted, starving body could take much more.