Poor Kevin. He’s having a rough week.

For the last month, Kev has been on swing shift. This means his quality Leina time has come in the mornings. He gets her from her crib and watches a little PBS with her, then has a little breakfast and relaxes on the sofa while she wakes up. Leina is such fun in the morning. She’s energetic and happy and a real charmer. So even though swing is hard, it does have it’s perks.

But this week, Kevin returned to normal working hours. Now, he only has a few minutes with Leina in the morning before he heads to work. The bulk of his Leina time falls in the evening when he gets home. And let me tell you, he’s out of shape.

On Monday, he came home and I set them up in the living room while I went into the kitchen to try and clean up after dinner. I was just starting to load the dishwasher when I felt something pulling at my leg saying, “up mamma, up!” Sure enough, there was munchkin. I shooed her back to Kevin but a few moments later she was back. This time with a book asking me to “weed it.” Again, I firmly directed her back to the living room with the instructions that “dada do it.” The next time she returned, I decided to investigate. I went over and spied Kevin, lying on his back in the middle of the living room. His eyes were closed and in between big yawns he was vaguely patting the ground next to him mumbling, “come play by daddy Leina….(yawn)…come play nappy with daddy…”

Yeah, that looked like a bundle of laughs. No wonder my small child was begging me to rescue her from daddy “play time.”

Then, last night, I noticed a disturbing trend. I left Kevin to get Leina into her PJ’s while I went to scrub the toilets. (Trying to scrub toilets with Leina around is like trying to roll up a ball of yarn infront of a kitten. Impossible.)

I finished up and noticed it was very, very quiet in the house. Curious, I walked over to Leina’s room. I looked inside and found Kevin lying on his back, napping on the floor. Leina was no where in sight. I checked the crib, behind the chair, and in the closet. Nothing.

“Hey, Kev, where’s Leina?” I asked.

“Huh? What?” Kevin mumbled and lifted his head to look at me.

I decided further questioning to be futile and instead began searching for the child. I found her standing in our room in the dark looking quite lost and confused. Apparently watching daddy nap and lost it’s luster and she had wandered off in search of something a tad more adventurous. Once located, I placed child and father on the bed. Kevin launched right into a game of “daddy sleeping” and I quickly realized that the adjustment period from swing to days might be a tad longer than I thought.

Poor Kevin. I think he’s going to need some time to slowly build himself back up to night time play. After a long day at work and a good meal, he’s ready for an evening doze on the sofa. Leina, however, is coming off of her afternoon nap and ready for some serious playing. We’ll see how tonight goes. Hopefully, Kevin will be up for more than playing “tuck in daddy on the sofa” because I have laundry to fold and Leina’s favorite game is take-the-folded-clothes-out-of-the-basket-as-soon-as-mom-puts-them-in. Yup, she’s a wild one!