Super Dad!

Patrick in his second and first honest to goodness full week as stay-at-home dad has been a hoot! On Monday he proclaimed that staying at home with Evie is great and all but honestly he was pretty bored. So in order to spice it up a little he started looking for exciting activities during the day. The first was to go out to lunch with a colleague, OK pretty normal, mundane. Then he decided it would be fun to take Evie down to visit with his soon to be employer. Sounds reasonable to me. Home depot was on the list too. But by far the best boredom-beater of the week was signing Evie up for scientific experiments at the U of A. I kid you not; he took her in to a “language lab” that where they flashed all sorts of images at her a la Clockwork Orange (sans the scary eye contraptions thank goodness) to see how she would respond. I must admit if it took such lengths this week to keep our super dad occupied I fear for the rest of the month!!

Patrick the super dad spends his days (when not facilitating and furthering science through our progeny) encouraging Genevieve’s development. I call every now and again to make sure all is well at home and as such get a good window into the days activities. As I understand it the schedule goes something like this

8 am – snack
8:15 am – tripod training
8:30 am – nap
9:30 am – snack
9:45 am – change diaper
9:50 am - laugh inducement (i.e., Patrick tries to be a silly as possible in order to get Evie to laugh)
10:00 am – explore the latest Cooking Light for good pictures
10:15 am – tripod training
10:30 am – zurburt lesson (a zurburt for those of you who don’t know is a belly raspberry)
10:45 am – puts Evie in her chair for a break
10:50 am – decides Evie doesn’t want to be in her chair
11:00 am – lunch
11:15 am – change diaper
11:20 am – nap
Noon – hand-eye coordination training with colorful objects

Well you get the idea. Lots of activity, very structured all for the benefit of little miss Evie ☺

The highlight of my week, however, was on Wednesday when Patrick called me at lunchtime. I was away from my desk and when I got back I had a very excited message from Patrick that involved zurburts but was otherwise totally intelligible (I think most of what he said was not in English but baby-speak) Well I called him back and he said that he had just called to let me know that Evie, intentionally or accidentally, while on his tummy and gave him a zurburt. What a brilliant child we have!