Top Five Things To Do When You Are Apart From Your Newborn For The First Time

After eight weeks of new baby madness we decided to take a short trip up to Edinburgh. We stayed there for a (surprisingly sunny) week and then, while wife and baby decided to stay on a few extra days, I returned to London for work, on my own, last Wednesday. 

So the last few days have been the first I’ve spent on my own since he was born. 

We’d been so busy arranging our trip and then introducing Marley to our friends and family up north, that when I found myself sitting at home in our London living room, completely on my own and without his little noises anywhere to be heard, I had absolutely no idea what to do.

Apart from attempting to get the absolute maximum amount of sleep I could in those few, short days, I had neglected to make any plans whatsoever.

So, I basically had no other choice than to inadvertently come up with this list of the Top Five Things To Do When You Are Apart From Your Newborn For The First Time. 

Here we go:

5. Get re-acquainted with the pet

Our cat behaves erratically at the best of times. But ever since we left her in the hands of a Cat Feeder for the first time (we found him online, and he is a nice man, but Bo either hides from him or hisses at and attacks him whenever he comes round) she has behaved even more psychotically than normal. 

A few days of re-kindling our friendship (albeit with a few bites and scratches) has succeeded in making her a tiny bit happier. 

Well, it had, until we locked her out of the bedroom again last night and she started trying to scratch down the door. 

4. Eat something irresponsible

There’s nothing like being left in the house on your own to make you feel like you have absolutely no responsibility and can eat anything you like. I decided that, after a day of zero exercise and just sitting on the couch, dinner should definitely include spaghetti hoops that night. 

Serving suggestion: two chicken kievs, a lake of spaghetti hoops and a mountain of potato wedges. (And an Irn Bru)

3. Sport (watching, not playing)

The football was on. The Olympics were on. The cricket could have been on, and i’d still have watched it. Probably. 

Oh, this happened on the same day as the spaghetti hoops….

2. Tidy the entire house

This happened the day after the spaghetti hoops.

And it only really happened because I didn’t want to get shouted at for not cleaning the entire house when my wife got back. 

*Note: the people in the picture did not help me clean.

1. Guilty pleasure

Yes, you could argue that I ticked this one off with the spaghetti hoops. But after an entire day of watching sport, I needed something different to watch in the evening. So imagine my delight when I saw the ’80s classic Commando was on. 

There is possibly no better way to suspend reality than to watch an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that you’ve seen a hundred times before. Especially when you know you wouldn’t get away with watching it in a million years if wife and baby were around.

So there you have my Top Five Things To Do When You Are Apart From Your Newborn For The First Time. 

*One more thing also happened this week. It turns out that while we’d been away, London had experienced a mini heatwave that had pretty much wiped out my entire crop of plants and vegetables in the garden. The chilli plant survives, but it remains to be seen whether the tomato plant will make it…..