Addison was in a different state for four days.
That meant I had to basically pack her entire bedroom to be sent along side her.
And even though she was with my parents who obviously know how to raise a kid since they raised two, they had never raised Addison, and so I sent some instructions.
I mean, come on. Every single kid is different and even though there are four basic rules to keeping a kid happy, it's always nice to have a little more direction so you aren't having to guess all the time. Or at least that was my reasoning with sending the instructions. For real, Paul and I babysat a little boy a few weeks ago and he was wonderful, but anytime he made a peep I had no idea if he needed to nap or eat or if he just wanted to be left alone. With Addison, she is so predictable that with a routine written out, no one would typically need to wonder why she was fussing.
So I did that. I wrote out her routine. But in Christa-fashion of course.
I typed out her typical routine starting at 6:00 am when she usually wakes up and took it all the way to bedtime. And then just for some good graphic measure, I showed that routine on two clocks. An AM clock and a PM clock.
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My mom took the typed out routine quite well. My mom and dad didn't make fun of me, well they did a little, but they weren't offended. In fact, my mom told me she expected nothing less. I won't read into that too much.
But honestly, for those of you that babysit, isn't trying to figure somebody else's infant out frustrating? When it's your kid, you know which cry is a hungry cry, or a sleepy cry and you know that those moments are coming before they even happen. You know that at 8:00 pm almost every single night your kid gets sort of cranky and just wants to lay down quietly so you are able to miss the whole crying scene altogether. But no one else knows that.
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Wouldn't it be helpful though if they did?!
Even though they probably wouldn't be able to pull out the whole parenting sixth sense right away, they'd at least have an idea of what was going on without having to go through the entire checklist.
Addison does really well with a routine. From the very beginning, she sort of just fell into it and didn't argue. Now, she's pretty predictable.
I know some people think that's nuts, but when you are an uptight, type A kind of mom, knowing that while you are at the grocery store your kid is going to have a meltdown because she is hungry helps keep that meltdown from happening entirely. So it works for me/us. It keeps us prepared and we've yet to have a "crap, she's hungry and I don't have enough food," or "we aren't somewhere I can feed her," type of moment.
It helps that she is just a well tempered baby in the first place.
Only once or twice has her routine been a pain. There have been a couple of times that I couldn't get to where I needed to be quickly enough (I wasn't paying attention to the clock) or I seriously wanted a nap but old Addi girl needed to do what was next and wasn't going to have it. So to combat those moments, I plan our days, I plan our drives, I plan my naps, I plan, I plan, I plan. And I think it makes all three of us much happier.
My parents tried to stick to my routine as much as possible, which meant a lot to me because getting a kid back onto a routine can be difficult, or so I've heard. My dad even made a legal statement at the bottom of my
typed routine that he sent back with us.
"We the undersigned believe that we followed this routine to the best of our ability. No matter what Addison says. Signed, Memaw and Papa"
So thanks to my parents for keeping the girl on a routine, it's made the transition back home easier than I expected.
