Planning ahead: 6 months with baby

Only a week to go before my parental leave (SPL) starts, so it's worth recalling what I plan to do with Little Bear during our special time together. I hate 'wasting time' and I love travelling, so what better way to spend my SPL than travelling with the Little Bear? When Charlotte was pregnant, I began to make some grand plans. This was gonna be a few months with my little guy, doing everything. 

He was going to be (and still will be) my little buddy, strapped to dad's chest on our adventures together. All I would need was milk, a change of baby clothes and a few nappies, and we'd be ready. Whilst travelling, I was thinking of picking up a new language,  seeing various friends spread across the country, and in between trips, carrying on with a part-time degree. He'll sleep loads of the day anyway...

The List:
- Travel: take Little Bear to Venice, Florence, Barcelona, the Fjords, Cornwall, Snowdonia and Lyon
- take him on a lads' weekend
- Exercise: go to the gym every other day (with baby in tow) and finally live up to the membership fee I pay
- DIY: long list of DIY jobs around the house
- Language: improve Swedish and French, and maybe pickup some Dutch (he can join in)
- Hobby: do some painting
- Food: learn to cook properly - so more than the 3 dishes I can do at the moment
- Study: do a degree

do 'the baby stuff'
1. teach him to crawl (maybe in one of the above places we're going to visit)
2. get him to start eating healthily
3. keep him ahead of his expected development
​4. teach him to say 'daddy's my favourite'

​Whilst being unable to think straight from having no sleep for the first two weeks after he was born, it only took me the third week to realise this list looks a little ambitious. But I prefer to be exhausted and doing stuff, rather than rested but bored, so I held out hope. When he was about a month old, it dawned on me that despite the 5/6 hours of sleep Little Bear was meant to have during the day, it wasn't 5/6 hours I was going to have to myself. For the last 2 months, most of those 5 hours were spent holding him whilst bouncing on the exercise ball (panacea to all crying) since he's been progressing through wind, colic, some early teething and now eczema. The list needed some editing.

When he was around 3 months old, my wife flew to Sweden for a family thing, giving me and the Little Bear our first long-weekend together alone. I knew it might be tough since we had shared caring for him when I wasn't at work, so I decided to take him to see some people out of London. Shortly after we stepped out the door, in quick succession: he started crying in the pushchair; it started raining; rain cover came out; dummy thrown to the floor; umbrella came out; second dummy rejected; slowing down meant we missed the bus; umbrella broke; spilled his milk everywhere whilst waiting for the next bus; still crying because foolish daddy was being too slow with the milk... So I now realise several mistakes were made here, but I quickly realised the list needed some further editing.

​Even when I found I'd have more SPL with him than I thought, expectations needed to come down. This is how it's looking now, with a few replacements in pink.

The List (v2):
- Travel: take him somewhere easy and probably nearby (let's be more realistic)
- take him on trips to the park
- Exercise: go to the gym... maybe
- use baby as exercise weight at home instead of going to the gym (success so far. And he gets heavier every week, the little fatty)
- DIY: try (and fail) to keep house tidy 
- Language: improve Swedish only (get real)
- Hobby: do some painting (I'm feeling this one wavering)
- Food: try to eat lunch everyday, despite baby (not as easy as you might think)
- Study: try to read a book
 
do 'the baby stuff'
1. teach him to crawl (at home)
2. get him to start eating (nice and simple. One step at a time)
​3. just keep him on track with his development (this is tough enough)
4. Not to bother: teach him to say 'daddy's my favourite'  (way too ambitious. Mummy is clearly his favourite)

So just a little less ambitious now we've been parents for 5 months. The upside is that the more time I spend with him, the more I realise it's going to be far from boring. I just need to have a bit of a reality check on what we can get up to together starting from next week.