Daddy Day Care

Nicholas's day care was closed today for Easter Monday, so he and I are having a fun day at home (so fun that he collapsed into his crib exhausted ... here's hoping for a long nap!). I'd initially planned to run a few errands, like going to Target and the grocery store, and maybe, just maybe, taking him to the zoo—a huge sacrifice for me, if you know how I feel about zoos.

But we ended up doing that one better: Alice came over to play for the morning! Her daycare was closed today too, but unexpectedly, so I agreed to watch her for the morning so Katie could get in some extra work. We had a very fun morning, but I realized about 10:00 that when you're accustomed just to one child, dealing with two is just exhausting.

On the bright side, we had a very good morning! Alice felt right at home immediately, though after about 10 minutes we had a little hint of possible trouble as she realized that her Mommy hadn't just gone out to the car, and was actually gone. But her mood brightened when I showed her one of Nicholas's puzzles (the one with animals), and after that it was almost entirely smooth sailing.  We played puzzles, we played basketball, we rode horsies, we read books, we watched 10 minutes of Thomas the Tank Engine (I just needed them to calm down!), we had grapes for a snack, we had cheese sticks for a snack, we sang songs, we read more books

They also posed for one picture because they had cutely decided to sit next to one another:

From 2011 April

There were some funny moments, which is great because they mostly developed out of Alice and Nicholas interacting with one another. My favorite was the two of them sitting on the couch as above. Nicholas started to rock in order to hit the back of the couch with his head. I looked at him and said, "crazy boy!" Alice got a look of glee in her eyes, started to rock herself, and announced, "I'm a crazy boy too!" Oh, those kids.

They both wolfed down lunch—macaroni and cheese, chicken fingers, peas and carrots, pears, and milk, of course—which was great. Makes life much easier. I realized when Alice arrived that we'd forgotten to bring up the booster seat from the car, which made things a little trickier. But Alice gamely tried to eat while sitting just in a real chair while I scrambled to find something that could substitute for a booster seat (by the way, we've found one reason that it's bad they don't make phone books anymore). I eventually came up with something:

From 2011 April

Don't recognize that? It's a 6-pack of rolls of toilet paper.  Firm yet soft—perfect for a chair!

The morning wore me out, but in a good way. And it did Nicholas in: he's been napping peacefully for two hours, better than he has in several days.

NB: I only titled the post after the awful movie because it showed up in the TV listings while I was eating lunch. I chose not to watch it.