Going solo

Roald Dahl's Golo Solo is about his adventures in distant countries. For this post I didn't set foot out of the door, there are no snakes or extravert expats, just a 9 week old and a two and a half year old, both left with me.

Erin and Liz went to Spitalfields for the day.

I had a few ideas of how to get Sophie and Adian through the day but didn't factor in that since I wrote about his routine he wouldn't be sticking to it.  During the weekends, when it's Erin and I working together, we tend to keep to our times.  I presumed it would be the same today.  But with a toddler wanting to help when Aidan woke every 15 minutes, it was tough.  I was either rubbish, am rubbish or Aidan is a little off colour - which his first dose of Calpol, for good measure, hopefully saw off anything too bad.

Despite that we survived.  After the first viewing of the day of Jungle Book, Sophie and I embarked on making a mini-movie.  We had a working title of Sophie Movie but extended that to Sophie De Vos and the Search for Aidan.  Because of filming, lunch-time came quickly. Almost too quickly. This was the first time I felt slightly out of control.  As I put the fish fingers under the grill, Aidan started to squawk.  He shouldn't have been ready for a feed until 30 muinutes - straight after Sophie was due to finish. With Sophie at the table, playing but ready for lunch, it was a bit of  scrambly-multitasking-scramble.  But there were no tears, burnt fingers or burnt fish fingers.  Apart me eating cold fish fingers it was a success.

After lunch, Aidan decided to meltdown and I only got him down to sleep about an hour and a half later.  In between watching Jungle Book for the second time Sophie would come into the bedroom and offer her comfort blanket and words of wisdom like 'Calm down little guy', which eventually he did.  As he did, Sophie wanted to sleep too. I read her a Dora book and she was drifting off when her mum and Erin came home.

It looked like I was in complete control.  I'd passed - with a lot of stress.  Until Aidan woke up half an hour later and Erin asked when he had last fed.  My mind-mush hadn't recovered and I couldn't remember one hour from the other.  After a slight panicky argument about when he was fed last, we fed him and all was well.

Below is the movie we made.  It's no Spielberg production but it entertained a two year old for a while, especially playing it back after performing each scene.  Remember, The only budget we had went on fish fingers.  

Check the ad lib in the middle.  Who needs Kate Winslet?

Aidan slept well last night. I did too. No need for any Roald Dahl.