Right now, this very second, I am letting C be babysat by the tv. It’s true. It might be the Backyardigans or Wonderpets or Yo Gabba Gabba. I’m not even sure. All I know is, I’m not doing the parenting; Nick Jr is.

I do this more often than I’d like. Sometimes, Katie will just say “this is the least of our problems today, just let her watch tv. We’ve got enough to worry about.” Other times it’s letting her vege with the tv when she is sick. As my mom says, people who say kids shouldn’t watch tv when they’re sick never had children.

Tonight, my excuse is that I am solo parenting, and I have a lot to do before I can put C to bed. The kitchen needs to be cleaned, the trash needs to be taken out, the diapers need to be washed, the dogs and cats need to be fed, and – oh yeah – C needs to be fed, too.

And obviously this post needs to be written, too, don’t you think?

Katie will probably be home tonight long after C is asleep, and I can’t wait until C’s bedtime – in another hour or so – to get things done. Heck, part of what I have to do is the behind the scenes part of getting C to bed – laying out her pj’s, turning on the noise machine (we’re big believers), getting the bath ready, and preparing the boppies. Boppies are key to getting C to sleep, and on solo parenting nights, you must have the right number of boppies by the bed before C is ready to go to sleep, or you will be at it for hours.

I feel guilty about letting Gabba Gabba do my babysitting, but not too guilty. I just don’t know how single parents do it. I’m just glad I have the tv as an option.

C has had a rough time lately. Her mama has been super stressed and busy because of life, work, and illness, and C feels it. While she went through a clearly dad-centered period a while back, she is currently completely mom-focused.

If you’ve ever had a toddler, you know that toddlers show stress in funny ways. She doesn’t understand when she’s stressed, and she can’t vent it like an adult would. Instead, she is clingy, fussy, and latches on to things.

This week, in addition to her mama, C has clung to her four-year-old cousin A’s polka-dotted hat, which she refers to as her “polky dot” hat. She wore it for ten minutes Tuesday afternoon, and she talked, fussed, screamed, dreamed, and cried about it for twenty-four because she couldn’t have it back and didn’t understand why.

So yesterday, A’s mom had pity on C and let her take the hat home with her. She was in heaven. She wore it for 24 hours straight and was as happy and content as I’ve seen her in weeks.

Unfortunately, though, A saw C in the hat before they left work today. And she melted down. C had just woken up from her nap, but she understood that her older cousin – whom she idolizes – was upset. So I crouched down beside her and quietly asked her if she could give the polky-dotted hat to A. She took off the hat and looked at it in her hands. Meanwhile, A’s mom tried desperately to convince A to let C borrow the hat a bit longer. And I asked C again if she could give the hat to A. She slowly said no, “it’s my polky-dotted hat,” she said as she stared at it with a look much older than her twenty-seven months should have allowed.

Then I quietly asked again “C, will you give A the hat?” C looked over at her still-bawling cousin, and it still makes me tear up to think about it. C walked over to her cousin and handed her the hat, saying something in two-year-old gibberish. Her cousin A was immediately pacified and ran down the steps, and C stared at her a few seconds before following.

C and I left for home a few minutes later, and that was the first forty minute commute in little C’s life where she didn’t have a single bottle. She just sat there, no doubt thinking thoughts usually reserved for much older kids. And I was so proud of her – and hurt for her – that I did all I could not to stare at her in the rear-view mirror all the way home.

Yesterday was no fun for all of us at our office. C was sick, but I still had her here because neither Katie nor myself could take the day off, and my mother had to be at the office, too, to help with C’s four year old cousin. But luckily, we had a bunny outfit. You can tell from the last two photos that she was running a fever. Although she was feeling a bit better by the time I snapped the pictures, her hair was in super curly mode from sweating out the bad stuff. Poor baby.

All C has talked about this week has been Halloween and costumes. I don’t think she really understands Halloween (nor do I), but she does get that this is a time when people dress up as funny things. She also loves all of the ghosts and pumpkins, which she calls “pumpkin patches.” Last night, C got go to Boo at the Zoo with some of my family. Luckily for all of us, my sister-in-law had an extra costume:

C made quite the fierce dragon

Sleepy dragon.

I guess her wings were too tired to fly to the zoo.

We all have our parenting things that we enjoy.

I love reading to C. I love taking her for walks. I love wrestling with her and tossing her in the air. I love being the tickle monster, and I love sitting and chatting with her and trading hugs. There are lots of things I love doing with and for C. I love her and enjoy the heck out of her.

But I do not like meals. I’m not that great at coming up with things I want to eat, other than wings or burgers or anything else that comes with french fries or a high ranking on the Scoville scale, and it’s even harder to come up with something healthy for her. And while we’re talking the truth here, I have a lot of trouble finding the patience to get food in her gut when it’s not something she can serve herself (she is still a bit weak on her flatware skills).

Sometimes I make her a baked potato with sour cream. Sometimes it’s eggs. Other times it’s whatever veggies I can find in the fridge or just some cheese and crackers. It’s easy to feed her what we’re eating when we eat at a decent time and it’s something she can eat, but rarely when I’m feeding her is either the case.

And that’s why tonight I fed her a huge quantity of cottage cheese and am now desperately trying to find something non-dairy to top it off. I’m not having a lot of luck so far.

I’ve got another few days of childcare-free work, and I’m less than thrilled about it.

I tried to convince my boss/dad that I needed to work from home this week. At home, I can at least get some stuff done, because there is more there for C to be entertained by and the front yard is fenced in, so I can bring her out without having to follow her around. But he rather quickly turned my idea down, saying that I needed to be in the office this week.

And that’s why I wandered around the office grounds for an hour earlier, swatting mosquitos and generally feeling miserable in the September heat. Yes, I have a low tolerance for heat.

C is mostly being good to me, although I wish we were at home with our favorite books and C’s “cook cook.” Plus I really had wanted to “work” from the zoo on Monday, and that plan was hard to give up on.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on right now. My parents are at the beach, and they’d better not bring me back a t-shirt.

Over the last few weeks, C has become increasingly “daddified.” If I’m around, no one else will do for anything. Yesterday, when she awoke from her nap, she got up on her own and came into my office to tell me about her nap and her trip to the grocery store with her Mimi. After she finished she gave me a high five and then asked for a boppy. I got up and started walking towards the fridge, at which point my mom showed up and offered to lie back down with C. My poor daughter was horrified.

It took a good twenty minutes to calm her down.

I’d by lying if I said that I wasn’t a little flattered. Having a small person totally love you, trust you, and depend on you is a wonderful feeling. ‘Nuff said. But it has its drawbacks. I love having C at the office, for example, but it’s difficult to do that on rainy days if C sees me and just wants me to hold her or read to her. A month ago, I’d read her a story and then say “now it’s Mimi’s turn to read to you,” and she’d happily trot off. Now she wants nothing to do with anyone else and cries at the suggestion of leaving me.

Obviously, teething is also playing a role here.

A few months ago, when C was mamified, I tried to convince Katie that it was really hard for me not just because she didn’t want that much to do with me but also because it’s a rotten feeling to be the one always taking the child away from what makes her happy. “You might not like being the only one who can take care of her,” I’d say, “but imagine how it feels to be the one always making her cry!” Now I know the other side of the coin.

And she does cry when I leave her. C comes to work with me three days a week, and my mother usually beats us here in the morning, although she also tends to leave an hour before quitting time. But on the other two days, I take C to my mom’s house. And that has not been going well lately. For a few of those days, I finally had to have my mom peel C off of me while I ran out the door, having already spent thirty minutes or more (translation = making myself incredibly late to work) trying to get a daddified girl off my lap. On Monday of this week, my mom put on an Elmo video for long enough for me to sneak out of the room. Today, C was sitting by the front door, and the second she turned her back I made a run for the back door and escaped through the garage. I always wonder if C gets confused when she turns back around and I’m suddenly not there. And I feel absolutely terrible about it.

I wonder how long this will last. It’d sure be nice to have a middle ground.

I just finished some work for a client, and I went downstairs to turn it in. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I stepped over the baby gate and set my work on the newel post in time for a big hug from C, who was shouting “daddy!” at the top of her lungs.

After the hug, I put my work in the boss’s office and then chased after C, yelling “I’m going to get you” while she shrieked with glee. I lifted upside down in the air above me while tickling her. When she got down, she begged for more, so I swooped her up and plopped on the visitor’s couch by the front door, where she laughed and laughed and begged for more tickles.

A few minutes later, I helped my mom take her out the door. Today is grocery day, and C gets to drive the “car” at the grocery store while my mom does her weekly shopping. As she was going out the door, she looked up at me and said “daddy go with us?” I said I wish I could, but I have to work. She blew me a kiss as my mom walked out of sight.

I have it pretty good.

I’m one of those people who have to get things accomplished to feel happy. And I haven’t done that enough lately.

Not that I should complain; the reasons I haven’t gotten much accomplished at home lately range from spending so much time with the toddler to watching football to hanging out with friends.

But when I woke up this morning feeling blue, I knew it was more than a case of the Mondays. I have a ton of stuff I really want to get done around the house, and I’m just not getting it done. With the help of a friends, I did get some drywall work done last week and a coat of paint put up in an upstairs bedroom. But I feel like I should’ve gotten two coats of paint done and the trim started. And I should be making more progress on getting C’s room ready. If nothing else, I’d like to have a clean kitchen and clean laundry!

It really is difficult getting stuff done with a toddler. Before C was born, Katie and I talked about how we didn’t want to have to have the TV on much for C. No TV babysitter unless absolutely necessary! But Katie works an insane amount of hours, and we have a big house and lots of people running around. Tonight, Katie won’t get home until after C is in bed, which usually happens for us one or two nights a week. Without an extra person to help out, I’m left with either the TV as the babysitter or more dirty dishes and unfolded laundry. And I’m not especially ok with that.

But I do hope to make it up to her by taking her on a good walk after supper. If only I can figure out what we’re going to eat….

I find that modeling behavior is often the best way to get kids to do what you want.

That’s why whenever I try to get C to take a nap, I always close my eyes, too. And she really gets to sleep best when I get about fifteen minutes, too. I’m just doing the right thing for C.

Purely selfless.