Jes has been a little stressed lately.  Nothing in particular, just life in general, compounded by the added strain of taking care of an infant 24 hours a day.  I usually help her out when I dont have work, and whenever I'm home. It's usually something like, she's taking care of the baby, and I'm doing whatever I can to help her along.  Like getting things for her when she's stuck in the recliner with a sleeping infant in her arms, or going to get her a bottle at 5am when Kiera wakes up for a little feeding.  She's the front line, and I'm the support.

Well this past friday, I decided I'd give her something of a day off on the following day.  Usually I take the overnight duity on nights when I'm not working the next day.  So I was already expecting to get up at least once overnight to take care of a crying kiddo.  Well as it turns out, She didnt wake up at all overnight.  She must have been extra tired.  She slept from 8:30pm to 7:30 AM.  Not bad.  So I got out of bed around 7, and took the dogs out.  I don't think Jes even heard me unplug the baby monitor and take it with me.  She was out.   At about 7:30 Kiera started to make enough noise that i was pretty sure she was serious.  So I threw a bottle in the microwave to heat it up a little, and went and got her.  She was in her usual morning mood, happy, playful, rested.  We sat down on the couch, and I gave her the bottle I'd gotten ready.  I put on an episode of The Dresden Files.  A freind got me interested in the book series, and I'd been listening to them in AudioBook format.  Thought i'd give the show a try too. 

After one episode (about 45 minutes) Kiera had finished her bottle, and Jes was stirring from bed.  I got up, and took Kiddo out to the kitchen with me, where I started to get her morning cereal ready.  We've been giving her a mix of bottle, and baby food, to get her transitioned over to food only.  This morning was prunes, mixed with oat meal, and some white grape juice to thin the mixture out.  It ended up looking like grule.  It always does, just different colored grule.  Remember that scene in Hook, the live action peter pan film, with Robin Williams, where they're all sitting around at the imaginary feast.  Once peter started using his imagination and could see the food, there was all that multi-colored mush that all of the lost boys were flining around?  Well thats what this stuff reminds me of.  Not quite as colorful, but the same consistency.  On the first spoonfull, I got quite  a sour face from the little one, but after a few bites, she started eagerly opening up her mouth to accept the spoon.  What a good little kid.  :D

After that, Jes and I played with Kiera on her mat.  She's getting so close to rolling over, so we were trying to help her a long a little.  She's almost got it.  She just needs a little nudge to get going, and then she flops her way over.  She bumped her head once, and wasnt happy about that.  We fixed it by giving her some love, and she was happy again.  Jes had to get moving, she needed to get to the store, and then get ready for a birthday party for a friend that she was going to that evening.  So I changed a very full diaper, those punes really do their work fast, and stuck Kiera in her jumper, she loves this thing, and let her go to town.  She spent a good hour in there, I got some things of my own done, listened to a little of my Dresden Files audio book, and before we knew it, it was time for lunch.  Jes gave Kiera some baby food, no oatmeal mixed in this time, just 2 jars of food. 

After lunch, Jes set about getting showered and changed for her party.  She was going with Amy, and Chris, her husband, was coming over to our place to help me watch Kiera.  Jes had to be out the door by about 2:30, so she had to get moving.  I spent some more time playing with Kiera, and at around 2, started giving her another bottle.  She fell asleep...  I put my audiobook back on, and let her sleep for a bit.  For the next hour and a half she went between sleeping and drinking her bottle, finally at about 4, she finished her bottle, and Chris showed up.  I stopped my audio book for the night, at a good spot too!  Harry's about to meet with the White Council to get reamed out for starting a war with the vampires!!

Baby sitting with Daddy and Uncle Chris

Chris came in, and set down his stuff, a few bottles of water, and a laptop bag.  He always brings his laptop, and usually a number of new games for the Wii.  We're both IT workers, we're out of place without our cel phones and laptops, so it's only natural.  Kiera finished up her bottle, and Chris settled into the recliner.  Once she finished her bottle, I let Kiera say hi to uncle Chris, and she snuggled into his arms.  I went and took care of a few things, let the dogs out since they'd been waiting for me since 2:30 when I sat down with Kiera.  Kiera was in happy baby mode for most of the afternoon.  Chris and I talked a bit about work, we both have rather similar jobs.  I work for Lafayette College, supporting most of the systems there, and He works for the CLIU, supporting a number of K-12 schools.  The big difference, aside from the age of our target users, is that he's in a primarily Windows shop, and I'm in an almost 100% linux shop.  This sometimes leads to jabs about which platform is better, but all in all, we're both doing what we enjoy, and thats what matters.  So our conversations invariably end up on technology.  Kiera was in her jumper now, and we swore she was listening to our conversation about low cost NAS and off-site backup intently. She's so going to be a geek when she grows up...  ;)

The plan was to get chinese food, so I went and dug out the menu we had collecting dust on the top of the fridge, and handed it to Chris.  Then I called it in.  Some chicken and broccoli with fried rice, and won ton soup for me, and chicken in garlic sauce for Chris.  He went and picked it up, and I gave Kiera her dinner grule.  Sweet potatoes, in oatmeal, with white grape juice to thin it out.  She loved it, ate it in five minutes flat.  I got her cleaned up after eating, and sat her in her chair.  Soon after that Chris came back with the chinese.  We sat and ate, listened to some 90's rock on Slacker, and entertained Kiera.  She was getting a little gretzy.  I went and got her toy keys.  She loves these things, shakes them and makes as much noise as she can.  She'd shake them, and then after a minute or two drop them into her chair.  Then scream at us, like we'd stolen her true joy in the world.  One of us would pick the keys back up, and shake them for her, and she'd smile, let out a little squeal, grab them, and go back to shaking them.  Then in a few minutes, she'd repeat.  Eventually the keys weren't doing the trick anymore, I had to pick her up and stick her on my knee.  Which was ok, by then, i was done eating.

We cleaned up the table, and I got Kiera ready for her bath.  Chris went out to the living room and did some things on his laptop, while I took care of the bath.  We have this little chair that sits in the kitchen sink, and then we use the sprayer to get her nice a clean.  Its like a shower, for babies and Daschunds.  We have a routine, set some towels down on the counter next to the sink, get Kiera ready there, and then stick her in the sink.  Her diaper held another megaton, curse those prunes!! I set her in the chair, and got the water to a good temperature.  The first spray from the sprayer had some cold water left in the hose, Kiera didn't like that much she gave me quite the look.  I pointed the sprayer into the sink, and got the cold water out, and then got kiddo nice and clean. 

After the bath i got her dried off and dressed, Chris took care of her while I cleaned up the kitchen of bath stuff.  Kiera was not interested in anything, I'd put her in her jumper, she started crying, Chris moved her to her mat on the floor, and tried a number of toys, none of them interested her.  Eventually he picked her up, and started bouncing her, that calmed her down.  It was getting to be time for  a bottle, and she was getting tired to boot.

I warmend up another bottle, and gave it to Chris.  He took Kiera out to the recliner, and stuck the bottle in her mouth.  She was happy after that, and rather quickly fell asleep! By now it was around 7, A little too early for bed time, but Kiera didn't care, she was tired.  She wanted to nap, and so she did.  It wasn't much longer until Jes and Amy came home.  Kiera had woken up by then, and was quickly scooped up by aunt Amy.  Amy played with her for most of the rest of the evening, giving her what was left of the earlier bottle when needed.  At 9, we put her to bed, she was _not_ interested in sleeping, not yet anyway, she wanted to play!  After 10 minutes of Kiera complaining from her crib, Jes went back and tried to get her to sleep, she laid down in her crib, for another 10 minutes, and started screaming again.  I was about to go have a crack and it, when Amy offered to go give it a shot.  After 15 minutes of rocking her, she finally fell asleep.  Amy was quite proud of herself, "Brownie points for Aunt Amy!" she said when she came out of rht nursery. 

So there it is, mommy got most of a day off, and got to go to a party, while daddy got to... well. work his butt off.  :P I've always appreciated the amount of time Jes puts into taking care of Kiera, but now I appreciate it just a little more.