Playing SAHM (housewife) - pretend play

I've been on a two-week vacation since Monday. All alone at home with Mr. Meh and MP. It's been wonderful. Like maternity leave all over again, except the weather is nicer and I'm busy in a different way. Mr. Meh is fun and very interactive now unlike last year when he was a cuddly little newborn sack who wanted me to hold him/carry him all day long. (Actually he still wants to be carried a lot. Except that now he's much heavier and demands to be picked up. Then he extends his arm infront of him as if to command "walk me this way so I can see....")

It feel like a very idyllic, housewife-y situation. The house is clean and I keep it tidy during the day. I did the laundry, cleaned the porch, etc...all sorts of things I usually do at night. I even cooked dinner. (Yeah for me. Cooking dinner is usually Andy's domain. I'm a more willing and much more efficient kitchen cleaner. And he gets a bigger kick out of cooking and his dinners are usually more imaginative than mine, and more importantly he gets home before I do).

There is a good pace to the day (well, all four of them so far) and it's a nice break from work. (Although I've been failing miserably this week not to check work email at night and respond to some key ones. I've also been doing a different work task each night so far -- ie finishing up work that I didn't get to wrap up last week. But I'm done now, so I should really stop. Go through webmail withdrawal. Be out of the work loop. Sounds easy, but it's harder to implement. And it's just so darn easy to log onto webmail when I'm already at a computer)

The idyllic version: In the morning we all get up around 7 after a good night sleep and see daddy off to work (we also stay in the bathroom with daddy while he takes a shower, brushes his teeth and shaves -- we brush our teeth at the same time). Then we eat breakfast (oatmeal with apples and milk, a piece of fruit and some bread that Mama eats). Then we play until 10 or so when we go down for a nap. After the nap, around noon or so, we eat again and then go out to stroll around to the park, playground and the store. We come back around 3 and taken a nap until after 4. Then we eat a bit again and toot around on the porch and the yard until 5:30 when Daddy returns. He plays with us, feeds us and bathe us around 6:30. Then mama takes over after the bath to put us down for the night.

This idyllic version has really been working out only today (and it's only 4 pm which means the day is still in progress and can go awry).
What's happened each day so far:
Monday: it rained all day. We were cooped in the house. Ivan wanted to be carried around all day. He didn't really nap well but was cranky all day. I couldn't wait for Andy to come home.
Tuesday, Wednesday: Much better, especially Wednesday.

On Tuesday we went for a stroll down Sligo Creek. We swung on the swings a bit and then continued walking on the trail towards Colesville Road. I brought food for him, thinking I'd try my luck at feeding him lunch while out (he's gotten too finnicky and busy to eat lately, which is a bit unnerving, but that's a different story). My daydreams of a little impromptu picknick were swiftly grounded when the eating derailed into a messy afair. Again this is a different story, which I should write up under the title "Messy and Finnicky Toddler Eating, How to Cope if You're Squemish and Not Tolerant of Messy Eating." When we got home from the stroll and took the afternoon nap, we woke up crying and cranky. The next couple of hours (between 3 - 5) were a bit trying. He wanted me to carry him non stop so he can see the sights, which is a problem since my upper body strength is really non existent, so I put on some Andes music and tried to dance him around. It worked more or less. Then Daddy came home and he took over until it was bed time.

Wednesday was a variation on the theme, except I took him to downtown Silver Spring to the stores. He was excellent at the shoe store, less interested in being dragged to Ann Taylor Loft. He, like all little kids, was mesmerized by the fountain. He stared and watched it and walked around it for quite some time. (I remember two years ago and last year, Andy and I would always comment how intrigued and hyptonized kids are by the fountain.

And today was the best. We went to the story time at the library (finally) and Whole Foods and the playground where we ate our lunch (yogurt and banana) and then came home and slept....