Mr. Mom, day 1

Rachel is in California for her friend Toni's wedding. Last night she packed the kids' lunches, laid out their clothes, and wrote me a shopping list for meals. Tomorrow, I am on my own.

After we got the older kids off to school, Isaac and I went to Artworks so he could make a mess with paints that I didn't have to clean up. He had a great time for about an hour, then he got cranky because he was hungry and tired.



We had lunch, but he wouldn't take a nap. This made dealing with the phone calls I had scheduled for work during "nap time" tricky. I put on a movie, but he wasn't interested, so I had to do some strategic muting, especially when it was 3:00 and I realized I should have left to walk the kids home ten minutes earlier.

Isaac found something to amuse himself, and I figured he was fine because I hadn't seen him push his chair over to the counter to get into Stuff He Shouldn't. But afterward, I found himself with a bag of marshmallows that was substantially emptier than it had been. I let him keep what he had in his hand but I confiscated the bag.

Later, I found out that Isaac had been planning ahead. The picture quality and the angle aren't great, but you can see the contraband under the seat of his airplane toy:



I mentioned that I was late picking up the kids. If Matthew were walking with Melissa I would have just let them walk home by themselves, which Rachel doesn't 100% approve of but which she has let them do once or twice. But Matthew rode his bike this morning, and would probably assume he could ride it back without checking on his sister. I got Isaac into his stroller with more strategic muting (still not quite done with the call) and started running. I intersected Melissa at the crosswalk; she thought she was capable of walking home herself!

I should have waited to see whether she would cross the second street with the crossing guard -- she didn't notice me, off in Melissa La-la Land -- but I didn't think of that until after I caught her attention. So instead, just in case, I reviewed the "only jaywalk with Daddy" rules.

On the way back, Isaac succumbed to his fatigue. He slept until his brother and his friend Connor woke him up an hour later. I'm going to have to institute a no-exceptions, no-friends-inside-while-Isaac-sleeps policy. We do this every so often, then we relent to Matthew's pleas (not Melissa's, because we know that there is no way she can be quiet with friends over; with Matthew there is a chance), then we regret it.



At 5:30 the older kids had gymnastics. I dropped them off, then took Isaac to McDonald's down the road for a happy meal and play time on their slides. When I picked up Matthew and Melissa again, they were jealous of Isaac's chicken nuggets -- he rarely eats them until he is buckled in the car; in the restaurant, playing is far more interesting -- so we made one more trip to McDonald's to pick up chicken nuggets for everyone.

When we got home, I found out that Melissa had greatly enjoyed the stamp activity at the end of gym class. Here she is with heart stamps up and down both arms and both legs:



Before bedtime, we got to Skype with Rachel. Isaac said, "Mama!" and held out his arms for her to pick him up. Isaac misses his mommy already.

Finally, I read chapter six of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever," which is tedious and poorly written but Matthew likes it and thinks the underwear jokes are hysterical.

(Then I fell asleep putting Isaac to bed for four hours and woke up at 2:30.)