Lately it’s been difficult to get out of the house with R, and by lately I mean basically since she started eating solid food. It was worst in the beginning. Meal time would take an hour to an hour-and-a-half, so that accounted for much of her awake time. It was made even worse when she would wake up from her nap and be contently playing in her crib. I want to promote independent play, so I leave her in her room when she does that. Sometimes that lasts for nearly an hour, so between that and mealtime it meant she was only awake and able to do something fun for 30-60 minutes. Very hard.
Here time spent awake while not eating or playing in her crib post-nap is increasing. Meal time has decreased to 30-45 minutes, leaving more like 1-2 hours to get out. Somehow, though, that always seems to disappear. Either I need to keep getting things done that I couldn’t finish while she naps, or she gets fussy or needs a bottle.
My goal this week is to get out at least once during the day, even if it’s in the afternoon. Ideally it would be mid-day to break up the time spent inside the house a bit more, so I plan to start at least taking a 30 minute bike ride. She loves being on the bike, I love being on the bike, and it generally makes both of us feel good.
I would also like to start getting together with some of the stay-at-home dads on the Facebook and Meetup groups I’m part of. It seems like every time someone posts an event, though, it’s right at or very near naptime. It’s a little frustrating. I need to start planning outings myself and invite people and hopefully that will fix this problem. I’m really craving interaction with other adults who are not my wife, so this would be great.
Hopefully this week sees R and me out of the house a little more. We do have swim lessons one evening a week, so at least there is that, but that’s mostly just playing in the water with the kiddos. Fun, but not really interactive in an adult way.