Granddaddy Daycare, trois

Left: Needing a moment I strapped her in and gave her her favorite chew toy. It wasn't that long ago she would fall asleep in her swing. ----------
Below: Enjoying her latest toy, a bouncy seat with four stations. She already had strong legs

but this will put her over the top. The first baby body builder?

In what should be my last blog about taking care of my granddaughter, you will learn of my new respect, baby milestones, and how quickly they learn. No, I will be doing daycare two or more days a week until the middle of June but I should stop writing about it. There are other things going on.

Although it is changing, being able to plop a baby down without fear that, in this case, she won't be there when you come back should be liberating. It's not. She is still a lot of work, not hard work, just constant WORK. It's a good thing she is so cute and actually does play with her toys remarkably well. She plays better I found out, if I'm paying an excessive amount of attention to her, specifically, all of my attention.

That it is so much work has given me new respect for my wife. My longest session of granddaddy daycare has been a full day for a substitute teacher. My wife took care of three babies in succession literally every day I worked, at least 50 weeks a year, for five years with each day being nine hours plus commute. (She took care of our children for far longer than that but the five years only covers when one of them was a baby.) Then there were the days that I was sick and she had another baby to take care of. All I know is that I could never do it that often, for those hours, that long. And then there are the people who do daycare for a living.

I definitely am not one of those. You couldn't pay me enough. But then, seeing my granddaughter smile and hearing her giggle at something I've done... She really likes to hear me talking like Donald Duck. Unfortunately, I really can't but she even likes my practicing.

While my repertoire of songs is much larger than it was just a few short weeks ago, it still isn't all that large. Mostly she doesn't mind me singing but she has started developing some taste. If I happen to be singing one she isn't in the mood for, she growls. When I change to one she likes better at the moment, she smiles. Sometimes it's that impish smile that only children can get when they know that their manipulations are successful. This has led me to reassess a path I was on. I was trying to teach her to say granddad, even to suggesting the diminutive she could use, "Gaga." While I still say, "Come to Granddad, Gaga," every time I pick her up, I've started a crash course to teach her to say, "Mommy." The reasons should be obvious.

My son said she turned over a couple weeks ago but I had never seen her do so. No longer. She did so today from her back to her front, twice. Since she still isn't crawling, being on her stomach isn't her favorite position and she doesn't yet seem to know how to turn back over. As a result, it wasn't long after she turned over that she started complaining. It turned out that she really didn't want my help turning her back over but after I picked her up, all was okay once more.

One other thing that Granddaddy Daycare forces me to do is go to bed earlier. I've found that when I'm tired, she isn't. Either women have instincts at this early of an age that they carry through all of their lives or she is a Republican. It's now after eight and I should be getting ready for bed.