Practice

As I said in my introduction post Zach is looking for a job now that he is nearing the end of school. This means that for the first time in over 18 months I will be home all day with Grace as her sole caretaker. Although I am her primary caretaker, Zach is home a fair amount of the time and so I never really feel like I am doing it on my own. Even when he does go somewhere else to work on school or take a test it is never an all day thing. The times he is gone and it is just Grace and I, I am always surprised at how much better behaved she is.

Well, completely by accident, today became a practice day of what it will be like when Zach is working again. I can say with confidence that I think it will actually be easier than when he is home. He left for the library this morning planning to spend some time with his senior project. While there, his dad called and was having major computer trouble at work, so Zach headed up to Salem to see if he could help. Thus Grace and I had the whole day alone and it went beautifully. Not a single tantrum was thrown, she napped well, ate well and played happily when I needed to tend to other things. While we had our dinner I asked her "Did you have a good day being home with just Mommy?" to which she replied "Yeah, it's okay when its just Mommy but it's okay with Daddy too". Good News! I explained to her that pretty soon Daddy was going to be going back to work and it was just going to be Mommy, Gracie and Hannah at home during the day. She seemed to think that would be just fine but I suppose the reality may be a different story. All in all though I think today went well and gave us both a sense of what life is going to be like when employment enters back into the picture. Now if only I knew what kind of baby Hannah would be I could really get a sense for my new normal. Oh well, can't have it all I suppose.