baby rocks.

Double Duty

Yesterday I babysat a friend’s baby for an hour and a half so she could have some “me time”… she came up with this idea of swapping time each week so we could get away, have alone time or get things done. Not a bad idea right? Except it requires more coordination than I anticipated, and takes up a lot more of the day than I anticipated. I was also a little worried because he’s not the easiest baby in the world… 

So it started our great. They played together so cute, coordinating little toy responsibilities: Colton would take the stars off the stacker and Santiago would put them back on.

Colton followed him around… Santiago being five months his elder definitely put him as the leader of the pack. He would crawl ahead and stop and wait for Colton, encouraging him to keep going. He would nod his head and wink at him and hold out his hand for him to come. It was amazingly sweet.

But then Santi crawled into the nursery, where he last saw his mom ten minutes earlier, saw she wasn’t there, and f-r-e-a-k-e-d out. And for the next hour and a half, he could only be soothed, slash distracted from crying, for about a minute at a time. Three minutes of crying, one minute of relief. I felt horrendously bad for him, and totally helpless. By the end Colton started whimpering and fussing and needing to eat, so I did what any respectable desperate mother would do. Held one in one arm and fed the other in the other arm. 

 

Next week is my turn to go out, except now I’m a bit worried… Colton has never once show any sign of acknowledgement that I’m leaving him before. He’s always perfectly happy with his toys and with whoever he’s with. So far only Sarah has babysat him (besides our parents), but I’ve also left him at the nursery at church with many different people and at the nursery at the gym… same thing, perfectly happy and content, never even looks my way, and always ends in the same report, “He was happy the entire time!” …Until today.

I drop him off at the nursery at the gym, and he screams. Immediate tears. Now let me explain something about my baby. He’s eight months old and I’ve only ever seen tears THREE times. He had tears. So obviously shocked at this, I went immediately back in, held him, calmed him down, set him up with a toy, waited until he was happy, and then left again. Immediate tears. TEARS! I tried this three times to no avail. He was NOT having it. So needless to say, I’m a tad freaked out that Colton learned to be scared and cry when mama leaves from Santi yesterday. I mean, if that’s not the case, then it’s one helluva coincidence, wouldn’t you say?! So the only saving hope I have that this isn’t the case is that he’s having a really rough teething day. His two front top are coming in at the same time and I had to pull out all the stops to help him out this afternoon. But still, if they weren’t hurting him at the time, why would he cry only right when I leave? Unless they also coincidentally hurt him at those very moments. Pff. I dunno. All signs point to the giant ironic coincidence that he was fine Sunday at church in the nursery, witnessed Santi’s freak out yesterday, and mimicked his behavior at the gym nursery today… which I didn’t even consider possible. IS this possible??

1. creepyeye liked this
2. emilykilpatrick answered: Tough call. They do get to a separation anxiety phase in older babyhood. Key word is phase—it all passes so quickly!
3. babyrocks posted this