Only Daddy goes to work

Sometimes I worry that we don't really have a schedule. Rachel gets up between 6 and 10 in the morning. She naps...sometimes. She goes to bed between 7 and 10 at night. It's a good thing we're not really schedule-based people. We do, however, have routines and when we do something backwards Rachel is sure to notice.

This morning she crawled off of my lap and onto Andrew's during family prayer. When the prayer was over he explained to Rachel that he had to go to work.

"Say bye-bye," he prompted her.

She looked at me, giggled, waved her hand and mouthed, "Bye-bye!"

(For some reason she rarely says bye-bye--she only mouths it or whispers it very softly).

"Oh, are you staying home with Daddy today? Okay," I said as I headed for the door.

She giggled a little bit more and continued to wave bye-bye and blow kisses. It was a little bit silly to be saying goodbye to Mommy so early in the morning. She kept waving and I kept walking towards the door.

She was still smiling and waving when I opened the door, but when I stepped outside she went absolutely ballistic.

Screaming, she pushed against Andrew, trying to get away from him. Hitting, kicking, spitting, lunging, and more screaming and pushing ensued.

We hadn't meant to make her so upset; we were just being a bit silly. I came back inside and picked her up.

"Mama," she said, giving me a bear hug and a big, wet kiss.

Then she put her big, happy smile back on.

"Bye-bye," she whispered to Daddy, alternatively waving and blowing kisses until he had closed the door behind him.

"Mama," she said again, leftover tears still glistening in her eyes. I was awarded another big, slobbery kiss. Then she pointed to the window.

We went and waved bye-bye to Daddy from the window, banged on it for a bit, and then got ready to go ourselves.

We were going to go to storytime at the library, so I got out the big stroller, and gathered up our books and the diaper bag. Then I faced the dilemma I always face: how do I get the baby and her paraphernalia, the books, and the stroller down the stairs?

Usually I just leave Rachel in the house, crying, while I carry everything else. Then I go back up and get her.

Today, however, she was a little more sensitive than usual about being left in the house without mom. I tried going outside by myself and she immediately threw herself on the floor, wailing and thrashing her limbs.

So I came back inside.

I tried to go outside again. She sat down, hard, and stared up at me, her lower lip trembling.

"Mama!" she cried, her tears starting to flow.

I realize she would have been alright for the two minutes I was carrying all the stuff down the stairs, but it was just too pitiful to bear.

So I took Rachel downstairs first and rang the Wilson's doorbell.

"Can you watch Rachel for a few minutes while I carry the stroller downstairs?" I asked Taber while his girls waved happily to Rachel. I'm sure she was much happier to be playing with her friends than she would have been stuck up in our lonely apartment.

To add to our hard morning, she fell off my lap during storytime while we were doing some finger play and landed right on her face. Ironically I can't remember the words to the finger play except that she toppled off my lap when we said,

"Be careful not to fall..."

Embarassed, I had to carry her out, screaming, in front of twenty other moms, all of whom had managed to keep their babies on their laps.

In happier news, though, Rachel is walking. It's pretty much official. She was toddling all over the library today. Chasing after other kids, walking from shelf to shelf, leaving piles of books in her wake. I guess that's happy news...she's still pretty slow and can only go so far before she has to stop and catch her balance. I have a feeling my life is about to get a lot more busy though. It's a good thing only Daddy has to go to work!