Life with one arm

Yesterday was John's first day back to work since taking paternity leave. Over the weekend, we started trying to get Leah accustomed to not having her daddy around as often during the day since he really needed to get some work done, and me accustomed to taking care of her by myself. She's a handful for 2 people to take care of, so the last couple of days have been pretty tiring for me. She is such a busy, active baby who needs constant supervision, first because she is a hazard to herself, but also because she suffers from pretty intense separation anxiety, so it's almost impossible to do anything else besides sit with her or hold her. She wouldn't even let me go to the bathroom all day yesterday, and believe me, I tried. Luckily John came home around 3:00 to work from home, just in time since she was having a major crying episode because she was not able to find him anywhere.

Since she is being very clingy and wants to be held all the time, I did manage to strap her into the baby carrier without any drama, which is a major accomplishment after our failed first attempt in Korea. I made it fun for her by dancing around in the mirror and making faces and playing peekaboo. She ended up doing great and I was able to make a few phone calls and get organized while she took a 1.5 hour nap on my back. I put her in it again today and she slept again. This might be my new way to get her to take a mid-morning nap when the bottle doesn't work.

I also got her to sit in her highchair with the tray table on. I put a whole bunch of stuff on it to keep her busy, like tupperware, wooden spoons, a book, blocks, which she proceeded to stick in her mouth, bang together, and then let drop to the floor over and over again. She was having fun, and I am glad she isn't afraid of being restained in the highchair anymore. We did the same again today, and I was also able to feed her with the tray table on, which is a first.

Today and tomorrow, I'm completely on my own for the first time, since John is out of town. It actually went really well today and there haven't been any major meltdowns except for trying to get her to go to sleep tonight, which is always really hard. She fights sleep with all her might. You can see her dozing off, and then she starts kicking her legs and waking herself up and crying. She didn't even search for John or have a problem with his absence today, which is normally a big source of grief for her. Things are getting better and better every day.