5 days down, 6 to go

Alex went to Kenya for work on Thursday and will be gone until next Monday (11+ days, 11 nights). He travels a lot, and I am very grateful to have his parents, Grandma and Grandpa Ruane (Gma and Gpa) usually living upstate, because they usually come stay with us while he is gone and provide some very much appreciated back up! During the winter, however, they go to California to visit their other grandkids, which is wonderful for all of them. However, when Alex travels in the winter (which he does a lot!), we REALLY miss them!!


Last year, things looked particularly bleak because Alex's winter travel coincided with no daycare for Kiana AND a blizzard. Fortunately, however, this year things are going better. Both kids are now in daycare, and I've organized things so that we have at least one event to work around every day. Here's how things have looked so far:
- Thursday: playdate with Emi at our house; Aidan fell asleep on the couch at 6:30PM afteward!
Friday: no pre-K; Aidan stayed at daycare till 4pm and napped with the babies; stayed up till 10:30PM because of his nap afterward!
Saturday: baseball school in the morning at Uptown Sports Complex; playdate & dinner in the late afternoon with Christa/Mark/Johnny/Ollie
- Sunday: church in the morning (missed singing practice but made it on time for the service!); playdate with Cira at our house in the afternoon
- Monday: lunch at Jake(/Dorota/Andy)'s house on the 6th floor; Aidan played with Jake & Angy all afternoon (1-6PM!); meanwhile, nap for Kiana (1-3PM), and then a baby playdate at our house with her friends David (& Alexandra), Sylvie (&Allison), Henry (& Alexandra), & Maxi (&Anna); afterwards, dinner at our house with Laurie :)
- Tuesday: back to daycare! (yay! made it through the long weekend!); playdate with Frankie planned for this afternoon


I'm continuing to schedule playdates and activities up the wazoo to fill the time and keep everyone entertained, and it seems to be a successful strategy. Night times have been improving, and it has definitely helped to have done some (of our version of) sleep training with Kiana before Alex left so that she has longer periods of sleep. We all miss Alex (Aidan especially, he has gotten extremely sad when he thinks about Daddy being gone too much!), and are counting down the days. Things have started getting into a rhythm, though. I am definitely not getting as much work done as I would otherwise. However, I'm grateful for things going as well as they are!


AIDAN QUOTES:
- (While practicing holding his breath under water in the bath): "I LOVE being a fish! I don't ever want to stop!"
- (While reading a book to himself on Kiana's bunk in the bunk bed): "I need Kiana!" (2 minutes later) "I need you too, Mama!"