Daddy's Back!!!!

Hello everybody!  After three weeks in Tampa with my new job, I finally came back home to Ohio last week to a completely different family and a completely different baby Hudson....he has changed so MUCH!!  When I left for Tampa, I had a calm and content little boy; he was fed every three hours and had just learned how to roll over onto his back.   But once in Tampa, the phone calls started coming - "Your son is acting like a brat!"; "Hudson is never satisfied but for a few moments.  And he is always HUNGRY!!";  "Huddy is always whinging!  He is such a handful now!!".   And then came the part that I had been waiting to hear since Angela and I got married.   In an almost sighed resignation, Angela told me on the phone, "I'll admit it Chris.  You are very helpful with Hudson, and I wish you were here right now to help."   Woo hoo!!!  And I went even further to interpret that as also saying "Hudson really misses his Daddy!".  Despite all the bad reports, I couldn't wait to get home to see my Huckleberry.

When I came home last Friday, the first thing everybody told me was that Hudson now had changed yet again.   He had started his first week of daycare, and know he was a totally different baby - a calm, cool, content, happy baby!!   I'm not sure if I believe it, b/c all I know is that he was a calm, cool, content, happy baby before I left and when I came home he was again a calm, cool, content, happy baby.  Nobody in the Kemp household knows what happened to Hudson while I was gone and why he acted out the way he did, but from where I'm standing, it's as simple as Hudson really missed his Daddy!!!!

Hudson meanwhile, has done a fantastic job at adapting to the daycare schedule.  I was a little hesitant to do daycare at first, given how expensive some of the places were, but after seeing him firsthand come home from daycare completely wiped out, I can tell you that daycare is worth every penny!!!   And this week, Daddy finally caved and got him ready for daycare and dropped him off.   Angela makes it look so simple, but it really isn't that easy of a thing to do!  You gotta make sure you dress him properly (which has always been a struggle for me...I'd say I've got about a 45% success rate of dressing myself in matching clothes, so thank the Lord most baby outfits come in sets!); then you have to make sure all his gear is packed (bottles, diapers, etc.); then you gotta put him in the car seat and make sure he has toys, pacifiers, blanket, et al. to occupy him.  Then you gotta drive him to daycare and pray Hudson doesn't start crying from the way I drive (which I've come to learn isn't the preferred way of driving a car).  There's a lot of little things in that list that can go wrong!   Thankfully, I got Hudson off to daycare without a hitch - though it did take me 30 minutes longer than I had planned and I had to go back to daycare b/c I forgot to pack something.

On Saturday, we went to the Newport Aquarium with Shannon, Andrew and Anderson, and Angela's friend Bonnie and her husband Kris.  Hudson loved it - he immediately wanted to get out of the stroller so he could look at all the different fish-ies and all the tropical colors.  I've never seen Hudson move his head so fast!   Right, center, left, then right, left, right, center, up, across, down......his head was going everywhere!!!  Cousin Anderson also enjoyed himself quite a bit, and it was near impossible to hold that boy still for long enough to get a picture with him!

Anderson would not stay still!

Yes, this is one of the better pictures at the aquarium!

 There were also a couple of spots at the aquarium where you could actually touch the fish.  This scared cousin Anderson half to death (no surprise!),  and he wasn't going near the starfish to touch it.  Hudson though, touched it without incident, albeit with Daddy's help.  There was even a shark tank that you were allowed to stick your hand in and touch!   Hudson was moving his little ol' legs and would get really excited whenever he saw a shark swim past!  I couldn't get Hudson's hand close enough to the sharks to touch, but I let Huddy watch as his brave Daddy touched every shark that swam past.

We had a blast at the aquarium and Hudson enjoyed himself....it definitely wore him out!   On the ride back home he slept the entire way and then when we got home he was STILL asleep, so we just let him sleep in the car seat, which if you know Huddy, he's not a big fan of the car seat.   

That's all this week.   I'm glad to be back home with my family and the Huckleberry, despite the fact that I now have to help out in feeding him in the middle of the night.  Huge bummer.   But Huddy's worth it!   See y'all soon!