One of the greatest difficulties for our family over the past year and half has been the ever-changing situation for our son. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you will remember our hesitation to put our son in daycare for a limited time. When his brief time in daycare was finished we were very excited to see it go despite the fact that it was better than we had expected. At any rate, our work schedules have been in constant rotation with frequent changes. At one point my wife had our son with her at work, then he was in daycare, then he was with me at work, and finally (finally) we have a vacation to spend together. This is a happy moment indeed.
What I’ve noticed (having been spending my days with him over the past couple of months) is that our son has been much happier in the mornings now that his mother and father are both home when he wakes up. It doesn’t hurt that we are around for the rest of the day either (though I’m sure that also helps create happier mornings) but we’re quite pleased at seeing our happy son wake up in the mornings and stay quite happy throughout the day. It’s not as if he’s always sad (he’s known as the “happy baby”) but there is a perceptible change when we’re both around. It is particularly difficult for him to not have his mother around at every moment.
At the end of the day we’re quite pleased about having a holiday to ourselves. Really it is a break (something we haven’t had in a good long while) but we’re very happy to be spending what is, sadly, an unusual amount of time in each other’s company. Best Christmas ever? While we’re sad to be away from our larger families we certainly needed some bonding time ourselves.