We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
Wednesday, Mar. 30, 2005 - (Mamma)
Metablogging: I just found out that a large minority of the pictures in enteries from a week ago to mid-January are missing.
They were lost in a recent Diaryland server meltdown and may or may not be restored eventually. (Well, ok, we're told they will be, but as far as I've heard there isn't a schedule.)
Oh well. Recent postings are intact, anyway. I assume that most regular readers saw the pictures when they were originally posted and few of the pictures are actually required to unerstand the posts.
Dad's big adventure
I may have mentioned this before ... I thought I had, but I can't find that post.
Maybe I only meant to ...
The original plan for this year had the family making two major trips.
In February, we made the trip to Sweden so Jack could meet two of his older brothers and his niece and nephew. We made that trip first for several reasons.
First, Jack's nephew, Leo, was born in November and none of us had met him yet. New babies are always a priority!
Second, the trip is much shorter than the trip to Australia and seemed like a good practice run.
Finally -- well, it's just a LOT cheaper. Both because the tickets to Sweden are half the price of the tickets to Australia, and because we have only one city in Sweden to visit, while Rod has family in four cities across Australia, and of course he'd like to see everyone.
However the trip to Sweden was so draining that we came to realize that trying to make a trip to Australia in the same amount of time, with a toddler, was simply insane.
So Rod will make the trip on his own in September of this year. That way he is less constrained by my vacation schedule. He can stay three weeks instead of having five days total, for travel and visiting.
Next year, Jack and I will go with Rod and we'll all have three weeks. Far better!
So, while Rod's gone, what to do with Jack?
Well, we've have made tentative arrangements for Jack to stay with several friends during the day while I work.
It's a tough call. It's hard to leave Jack with someone outside the family for the first time, but it helps a lot that he's nearly two and can make himself unerstood, is very social, and seems ready for the new experience.
But finding people we can trust completely, who don't have other committments that would make it impossible, and who live near enough to make it feasible to get to work on time is also tough.
We did manage to find two friends who are available for a week each and then I will take my last few days of vacation off to stay with Jack the third week.
Maybe we'll even take a short road trip!
So now I have to figure out how to prepare Jack for his Dad's absense and for spending time without Mamma or Dad around.
It's far too soon to talk about it. That would only confuse him. But there must be ways to work up to the experience and we'll work on providing those.
And we will all be going to the Delaney family reunion in New York this summer, where we'll get to camp and everything! That is going to be so much fun! ...but it's been a long day; one in a long chain of long days. I'm going home to my guys.
Goodnight all!
