I Am A Slave To My One-Year-Old

Yesterday’s tale in the continuing saga of Mr. Mom was a new one. I’ve experienced this before, but never on the scale of all day long. What am I talking about? Being a slave to my one-year-old beautiful little girl. How is this possible? Read on.

I sit down in front of my computer to just check my email. It’s about the sixth unsuccessful attempt at doing so. Avery, my daughter, toddles up to me and babbles off some cute gibberish. She then grunts at me and turns as if walking away, but pauses and stares back at me. Her bright twinkling little brown eyes flash at me and her pudgy little grin just beckons to be smooched. I’m determined to at least weed through the spam in my Inbox, however and so turn back to the screen. She comes back to my side and grunts louder this time. I persist in my task convinced that if I just ignore the cutey-pie, she’ll just go to playing with something on the floor nearby. Wishful thinking. Her grunts and ramblings become increasingly loud and she even feigns a cry (no tears included). She reaches up and pulls on my shirt and shorts. Next she grabs the finger on my hand that is closest to her and leans almost at a 45 degree angle to pull me from my task.

Drat! Foiled again. She leads me down the hallway and into her bedroom where I assume my rightful position on the floor. Her routine now consists of the following steps. First she pulls all of the books of the shelf one by one and brings them over to me to read. She sits down on my lap, hands me the book and states, “boo”. The ‘k’ is still silent. 🙂 I do not have to read it though; I simply open up to the first page and start to read. She then gets up impatiently and repeats the process, until all books are on the floor next to me.

The next step is dancing. She has a little puppy toy which has an array of audio sounds that can be triggered from squeezing various body parts: the foot (paw), the hands, the nose, the tummy, etc. So I squeeze the right parts to get the music to play “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”, “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider”, “The ABC Song”, etc. as she dances in circles around the room.

Finally, it’s time for blocks! She pronounces it more like “bocks” but Mommy and Daddy can usually figure it out. She has two sets of blocks; some oversized legos and some old traditional wooden blocks. The name of the game is build and destroy. Yep, you guessed it! I build ’em and she destroys ’em.

After doing this for a while I’ll find some distraction to get her out of the room. Sometimes I might be able to get her involved in something in my office or in the living room right next door. Then, the silly man that I am, I’ll try once again to sit down and check my email.

Writing this blog I realize how cute the things she is doing is. I also enjoy my time playing with her, but sometimes it’s a bit aggravating that I spend an entire day on the floor. It’s difficult for me to fathom how my wife actually cleans the house and does laundry and a myriad of other tasks while doing this. She is truly amazing as is my daughter. I know someday I will look back and miss these times.

So, how did I get to write this blog you ask? One word. Nap. 🙂