Well, we survived day one.

The last couple of days that Sir Monkeypants spent at home were not, unfortunately, the best days we’ve ever had as parents. The main problem these days is Gal Smiley. She’s in a very strange stage, in which she spends half the time being unbelievably sweet and kind and thoughtful and tender, and the other half of the time raging uncontrollably. One minute, she’ll be noticing that you don’t have any Smarties, and she’ll look at her own box of Smarties, her favourite treat, and then offer you some, and ask you to do “cheers” with her. The next minute, she’ll be gently wiping away spit up from the Wee One’s mouth, then giving her a push in the swing. The minute after that, she’ll be on the floor screaming because you dared to suggest that she put a sweater on before going outside; she’ll screech at you not to touch her, to LEAVE! ME! ALONE!, until finally she gets angry to the point where she throws Shearly, her stuffed sheep. Then she has a total and complete meltdown, because Shearly is across the room for some totally unknown reason, and this is clearly an unsolvable problem on the level of world hunger.

This last week her tantrums have been quite unpredictable, and I had no idea how I was going to handle it. What would I do if she had a freak out while the baby was sleeping/eating/trying to grow up with normal hearing? We knew for sure that this would probably be the end of the Gal’s afternoon naps, because naptime is the one time guaranteed to cause a breakdown, and there was no way I could spend a half hour calming her down, then another half hour trying to get her to go to sleep, while the baby was who-knows-where and the Captain was doing who-knows-what. So today I avoided the whole nap situation and just let her stay up, and she did surprisingly well. So good, in fact, that the only time she had a meltdown was at bedtime, for Sir Monkeypants, who had just come home from work. Welcome home, Daddy!

Between the lack of tantrums, and the baby happily putting herself to sleep for her four naps, and the Captain helping Gal Smiley use the potty while I was busy nursing the baby, I’d say that our first day as a team of four could not have gone better. Knock wood!

Just about the only down side is that I used up all my MommyFun Activities in one day. I had a whole schedule of stuff to be used to fill up the time — PlayDoh on Mondays, painting on Tuesdays, riding bikes in the basement on Wednesdays. Today we painted, and coloured, and did PlayDoh, and did stickers, and rode bikes in the basement, and went for a walk outside, and still had time in there to watch a movie. What the heck we are going to do for day two, I’m sure I don’t know!