Locking In The New Routine

How quickly I embraced this new job I have of dropping Johnnie off to school and then picking him up 3 hours later. How quickly did I lock in to the new routine. Of course it wasn't like there was something really different to get used to, other than actually physically walking with Johnnie to school. I was doing that already a year ago when he was at TK. Of course the difference then was I'd drop him off at school and then I'd drive to work. And then in the afternoon, I'd hustle home by 4:30 PM to pick him up from STAR. Huge difference picking him up at 11 AM as opposed to 5 PM. And not just showing up with that yellow sign with his name on it (see pic). When I think about it, I didn't really know what he did in TK class, but I did get to see what he would do in STAR and that I think is where I got started with the idea that he was already smarter than a lot of kids a couple of years older than he was. These days the routine I'm getting used to is to find something for him to do when he got home other than watching something on the iPad or watching videos. I was ok with him getting to know Cat Ninja and the Bright Family on EPIC Library but how long could I keep that up really? Something to work on still clearly. In the meantime, Claire seemed to be doing better today. Her poop was still a little too soft in the morning. So much so I kept giving her the chicken and rice meal for breakfast and lunch. Great. Not only do I have to get up at 6 AM to take her outside to poop and pee, which is now part of this new routine <or risk her peeing and/or pooping on anything I would have to wash>, now I have to boil chicken this morning too. Smh. Did i really sign up for this? It feels like the 3 AM feeding I used to do with Johnnie back in the day when he was newborn. Ok, not completely the same but I'm still up much earlier than I like doing something I am sure I wouldn't be doing otherwise. Today I added something to the routine after lunch. I took a nap. Not that I was sleep deprived, as I actually did catch up on sleep the last couple of nights, but hey you can still take a nap regardless and I took a good half an hour too. I figured I may have been tired from all those steps the last couple of days. After all, I did do almost 150+ hours of active minutes just on Monday alone.

The other part of the routine for Wednesday is now the weekly bath for Claire. Before getting to that, there's karate class for Johnnie, which I made him do tonight because he seemed to have a lot of energy and he seemed a little too cooped up in the apartment. I noticed he had ripped the knee in his pants. The knee that was already reinforced with double stitching. I'm sure he wasn't doing anything really really wild, just him being the ever so active Johnnie.  So much so I made us take Claire out for a walk late in the afternoon. The grass in the front of the apartment hadn't been cut in a couple of weeks and I'm sure it felt like a blanket to Claire. Look at boy and dog walking around the front of the apartment.  And of course there was the Wednesday night trip to Panda Express Westwood. I augmented tonight's fried rice with some of the leftover Italian sausage from yesterday. Worked out just fine. And then finally it was time to give Claire her bath. We learned last week that she didn't like being forced to be under the faucet and so this week we were much more gentle with the bowl and just rinsing her with water slowly and deliberately. She was far less agitated and even sat there patiently while we rubbed her with soap. The best part is that how good she smelled afterwards. NOW you can lie all over the bed. Johnnie took a bath too since he was already all wet. And he even spent time playing in the tub like he used to do. Now mind you just wiping off the loads of wet hair on Claire was enough to keep me wet myself until it was time to go to bed. And although she had all this energy right after the bath that she was running around wildly and tossing stuff around, she calmed down soon enough when I held her while trying to do stuff on the computer. I didn't do much work mind you, I think I had earned a little take-it-easy time. In fact, I went ahead and took Friday off seeing as I was at that point where I would be losing hours since I am already at the cap. I did start researching for trips to Orlando with the intent that we're going there just the two of us around Thanksgiving time. The last time he and I took a trip together was when we went to San Diego in 2019 Spring Break. Seems so long ago now. 2 years ago it was. He was still at Blue Oak. And this time he's older and I don't have to carry him around anymore. Heck I can't. He's bigger now. As I'm reminded when he kicks me in the bed looking to stick his feet into something warm. We're going to need him to get his own room for sure by this summer...