The Era of Casey

For all of Casey's life, he has essentially been a tag along - dragged to his big brother's playdates, to preschool pickups, to parks he was too little to navigate.  The poor kid has taken it in stride.

But now?  At 15 months, Casey is coming into his own.  As of this weekend, his morning naps officially ceased.  So on Monday, when my husband left to take Braden to school, we bid them farewell as we usually do and waved until they drove out of sight.  And when 9:00 am rolled around, instead of putting him back to bed, we just looked at each other.

Now what do we do?  

Casey's lack of morning slumber left us with 4.5 hours to kill.

4.5 hours.  That is a long, long time to hang with a wandering 15 month old who is determined to engage in continuous suicide drops from stairs, coffee tables, couches, anything above six inches, etc.

Just two years ago, I found myself in a similar position with Braden.  I had just left my law firm on a leave of absence, and was, for the first time, home five days a week.  On my first day home, I went to a Children's Museum, picked up a new friend, and poached all of her friends.  Before I knew it, we had an active social life and days filled with activities.  I was living the real stay at home mom dream, people.  And the dream lives on, but generally only in the afternoons, when the older kids get out of school.

But what about my Casey?  Doesn't he deserve some Casey-centric activities?  So far, I have failed him.  But perhaps it's not too late!

I trekked out of the house Monday morning on a mission.  I needed to find partners for this new era of Casey.  Fellow mothers to go to parks with and drink coffee with and talk about poop with. Fellow mothers who, in any other scenario,  I may never have been friends with, but who I bond with through a mutual boredom and search for activities.  I was bound and determined not to come home empty handed.

Having sworn of off said Children's Museum after contracting numerous illnesses there over the years, I opted instead for the only slightly less germ filled kid's play area in the basement of Barnes and Noble.  I scoped out my Casey's potential playmates and ended up talking to a mom with a two year old girl.  She also went to Penn for grad school and recently quit her job.  We talked about staying home and swim lessons and coupons and how annoying it is when friends and family make comments insinuating that we "wasted" our educations.

Does like attract like, or are we opter outers taking over the world?

We exchanged numbers and I considered the morning a success.  We made plans to meet up next week.

On our way out, Casey tripped and hit his head on the corner of a table and got a bump the size of an egg on the side of his head.  I called the pediatrician in a panic and watched for signs of disorientation and light sensitivity for the rest of the afternoon.

All in a day's work.