I have been off from work since last Thursday and don’t return to my work from home office until Monday, October 11th. Time off for me is always nice, but when it does happen, Nina puts in more work at home for her job. So, basically, it will be a lot of me and Niko.
It felt like everyday for the past several days, he has been waking up at 6:45 am or even earlier. Wait, he did! Guess who has to be up with him? Me! So, yeah, I am a bit tired, but not to the point of sleep deprivation. For a long time now, I have always let Nina sleep in the mornings, even it’s only a few minutes or an hour. I did tell Niko, that I flat out refuse to go downstairs and turn on lights until the sun rises!
One of the good things is when he does wake up early, we have an earlier bedtime for all of us. Usually, I have been coming upstairs by about 9:30 or 10 pm and am ready for sleep, but that has changed to around 8 or 9 pm. After we put him down for sleeping, I am a kitchen dishwasher, a garbage collector, I do a short walk outside, I eat, I drink, I read the headlines on the internet, I read a book, and I write.
The past few days, I have streamlined everything I do into about 15 minutes. I then head upstairs and watch a movie for a few minutes, then time for sleep and I pray that Niko will wake up after the sun has made an appearance. That is why it will take me 3 days to watch the MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK movie on HBO Plus. When THE SOPRANOS was on, I watched it. I was born and raised in the area where most of it takes place and, I remember one time, for one episode, my dad and I got invited by the local movie/television critic to a Sopranos watch party; we got to see that particular episode before it was shown on HBO. I still have a hat and a sweatshirt from that watch party with The Sopranos logo on it. Pretty cool!
On Wednesday after he woke up, I went downstairs to gather my laptop and breakfast and in the darkness of the early morning, I missed the last step of the stairs and tripped. Not funny, because my big toe caught the brunt of the thud and it hurt. I was able to movie it, which was good and later when Nina woke up, she got me an ice pack and told me to take some Aleve. Oh, that reminds me, I need to a find a light to plug in across from the bottom stair.
And, on Friday, I got him for pee at 3:15 am. Right when that happened, a loud thunderstorm was brewing outside with lots of lightening and very heavy rain. I asked him if he wanted me to sleep with him until breakfast and he said sure. Well, I don’t think he went back to sleep after as he was pounding his head on his pillow; that is how he relaxes, for 2 hours. At 5:30 am, I heard him sit up in bed and he refused to go back to sleep. Was I bothering him? Probably. He did lay down in his bed for about 45 minutes and I took a very short dad nap on the sofa.
When he does get up early, he has no urge to go out during the day. That is hard for me, since I want to do things with him. But, at the same time, it’s also nice because we get to do nothing. On Saturday, he woke up at 6:15 am and a few hours later, I tried to get him to get dressed so we could do something. All I will say is he is stubborn; he gets it from me! Once he is set on his answer, which was NO, nothing can change his mind. Actually, I did get him to change his mind and that was because I said he could have his iPad and use my hotspot. We didn’t even do anything fun, all we did was get shakes from Dairy Queen.
I do have a few ideas that require getting him dressed and out of the house with a mask; one is the children’s museum and the other is Sea World. Anything else we do will be adlibbed! Oh, I do want to take my car and Nina’s car to a do it yourself carwash. I think Niko would have fun getting them cleaned. We will see though if anything above can get done! I doubt it.
Next Sunday, on 10/10, Nina and I will celebrate 11 years of marriage. I do want to go somewhere by myself to get a few things for Nina and it may be Friday or Saturday. I will pick-up food for us from somewhere as well as I like to celebrate happy occasions with food.
Last year, to celebrate the big 10, we were going to go on a cruise, but, it got canceled due to the pandemic. No worries, as we got a future cruise credit and will probably go next October or November.
