The experience, while great, provided some strange emotions. You’ve heard of the the 5-stages of grief, well here are the 4-stages of being away from your first and only child. First was:
Guilt
We actually felt bad that we were so excited for a little “free time”. As I was finally rolling out of bed Saturday morning at 10:00 am I made the comment that “I could get used to this” and was immediately met by horror and shock from my wife. Just an hour later when we were sitting, care free, in a restaurant waiting for our breakfast at about 11:00 am she agreed it was pretty awesome and wondered, “does it make us bad parents that we are enjoying being away from our child this much?”
Jealousy
The next phase took about a day and a half to materialize. My parents were constantly updating us with text messages and pictures – like the one at the top of this post – that depicted our son having the time of his life. We would respond with questions like “is he asking about us?” or “does he seem homesick?” and were surprised the answer was “not at all, he’s having the time of his life. He hasn’t asked about you guys even once.” Wait a minute? That’s not cool. We have been talking about him the whole time he was gone and he doesn’t even have the decency to ask the occasional “mama” or “dada”?
Worry
We pride ourselves on what “cool” parents we are. We normally don’t obsess over the little dangers of raising a toddler. But when you get videos like this emailed to you – its hard to wonder just what exactly is going on!
Realization
As much fun as our three day respite was, we realized pretty quick that something was missing. Despite all our big talk about how great things used to be, we missed Elliot bad. No amount of sleep or food could stop us from thinking about our little guy. He has completely and thoroughly altered every aspect of our lives. We even had to bring his baby sound machine into our room because we had become so accustomed to hearing it through the baby monitor we couldn’t sleep without it.
Jordan Echols is a Marketing Manager for Texas Health Resources and dad to little Elliot, who has changed his life forever.
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