AUTHORS NOTE: I have nearly 30 drafts, of varying degrees of quality and completeness, of posts I’ve never published. I uncovered this one a few minutes ago and was pondering the difference between the guy who wrote this and the guy who is about to publish it. Logan turns 2 next week, but this was originally written when he was roughly 4 months old.

The setup: Logan has been sick and my wife is 700 miles away.

4:15 – baby wakes for the 417th time this morning and is hungry
4:25 – there is a coughing incident leading to a formula puking incident
4:30 – unplanned bath for baby
4:31 – accidentally move swivel faucet too far and end up running a half gallon of water all over the kitchen floor before figuring it out
4:32 – put towels down on kitchen floor
4:40 – baby is cleaned
5:00 – I take a quick shower
5:03 – daycare cancels
5:15 – start car to warm it up
5:25 – I finally see the text about daycare about 5 minutes before we would have left
5:30 – I decide to to just take the day off from work, trying to work from home with a sick baby would be an exercise in frustration
5:50 – watching Justice League I note that a bunch of the spaceships in this episode are shaped like giant steel space dicks
5:55 – ponder another watch through of BSG while the baby falls asleep
5:56 – decide to wait on any big decisions until after breakfast
5:57 – realize the car is still running
5:58 – shut car off
5:59 – start breakfast
6:05 – step on wet towels on kitchen floor while wearing socks
6:08 – back to bed

I don’t recall how much more sleep I was able to get, but it wasn’t a lot. As expected, Logan was fussy the whole day. I did grab a 15 minute nap that afternoon which was helpful.

The wife’s boss really wanted her back in Des Moines on Friday so they moved her flight up a day. I got my wife back Thursday night and Logan and I were happy to see her. I celebrated by going to bed and passing out.

Not all days are like this. This an instance of the “days are long, years are short” thing you keep seeing on the internet. We made it through although I am not in a rush to repeat it anytime soon.

Being solo Dad for a few days alternates between barely functional zombie to Mary Poppins to John Rambo. So tired, shuffling around my own home, caring for my boy, but also willing to shoot any number of people who present a threat to me and mine with exploding arrows. And while I enjoyed few days with Logan, tag team parenting is, by far, the only real way to go.