Something Different

Keefer wrote the following:

Stewart spent the weekend of July 7-9th with us. The goal was to give Stewart an opportunity to spend some time with Carrie without Holly. Jody picked Stewart up at 7:45 pm in Richmond and brought him back to Lexington. Not really knowing what to expect we had agreed that this was the thing to do. I got a little apprehensive when Jody told me that Stewart had called earlier that day and left a message. Stewart, in an excited voice, wanted to know the exact time that he was going to pick him up.
I had given Carrie a bath and put her to bed before arrived. Stewart did not see Carrie Friday night.
Saturday morning Carrie woke up at the usual time around 7:00 am, however Stewart seemed to think that it was earlier and argued with Jody about the time. Not sure why this mattered but Stewart would not let it go.

Stewart prepared Carrie oatmeal and she was eating it by the time I got downstairs. They were watching cartoons. At one point Stewart complained that Carrie was watching the cartoons instead of eating. I did not say anything.

Most of the morning Stewart played with Carrie and seemed to be having a good time. He did take her upstairs to watch more cartoons. He claims that she tricked him. He said that she wanted to go upstairs to play with toys and when they got upstairs she asked to watch the cartoons.

Around 11:00 am Stewart started to feed Carrie lunch. One thing Stewart did that bothered me was that he tried to leave Carrie in her booster seat while he wanted to go outside. Jody heard him tell Carrie that he wanted to go outside and reminded him that he should not leave her in the booster seat unattended. Stewart did not leave. She did not eat much and he claims that she wanted to take a nap. He also said that she crawled into bed on her own. Not sure what that means because she does not go to bed for a nap on her own. She did not sleep very long. I think it was because she may have cried out and when Stewart checked on her, he said that she wanted to get up. I think she sleep for about 45 minutes. Her naps are usually 11/2-2 hours.

After the nap, Jody talked Stewart out of going to Woodland Pool. We did not want him going to a public pool with a lot of people by himself. Jody told him that Carrie does not usually stay very long and it would be a waste of his money. We have a small backyard pool that Carrie loves so Stewart filled that up for her and they had a good time.

For supper we had to remind Stewart that it was time to feed Carrie. I am not sure if he forgot or expected us to take care of it.  At 7:20 Jody and I left for a movie and we let Stewart give Carrie a bath and put her to sleep. Stewart said that everything went okay.

Sunday morning:
Carrie slept till 7:30. I was already up when Stewart brought her down. He gave her a waffle. There was a lot of one sided conversation but it was bearable. Because of the syrup her hands got sticky and Stewart started hand feeding her.  Even though I try not to give advice I told Stewart that Carrie has learned to feed herself. Although slower and messier she gets the job done. He did not listen and continued to feed her with a fork. I suggested that he give her some applesauce since it looked like she was still hungry. He got the applesauce and insisted upon hand feeding her. He even made baby sounds while he was feeding her.

Stewart went to the “Little” Park with Carrie. It is a church playground and they were having church services. Jody had to call Stewart on the cell phone to tell him to be quite. His voice was so loud we could hear him from our backyard. About 30 minutes later Stewart came back mad. Not sure who he was mad at. Someone was setting up for an outdoor activity and Stewart felt that he had to leave in a hurry. He got flustered trying to get Carrie to leave before she wanted to and he had to gather up all of the toys. Evidently this cause Stewart some stress and he came back trying to tell us what happened.  He told the story so fast and was so mad that it was hard to get the details. Carrie wanted to go swimming so he forgot about it for a little while. He did mention it again but it was hard to get the details. Just another example of him overreacting to a situation.

Overall, the weekend went better than I expected. Several things Stewart forgot to do but nothing major and we were always looking over his shoulder. We tried not to give advice because we think that is part of the problem with Holly. Stewart complained often about how his mother does not let him do things his way. Although he did not thank us for letting him spend the weekend with CarrieS I think he had a good time and I am sure he felt that he had done a great job with her.