Paternity Leave!!

My husband works for a great company that recognizes that men need to contribute to their family as well as women - and so they give a one-month paid paternity leave. He is now on his paternity leave. AND we have childcare! So he can spend time with the kid and then drop the kid off and spend some time at home catching up on all the stuff we've gotten behind on in the past two months.

Of course, being The Wife, I have a long honey-do list for the Studly Hubby during his paternity leave in July. On the top of my list is getting his help working out a better morning routine for Layla and I (the Studly Hubby usually leaves for work before we get up - but not in July!). Our mornings currently go like this: wake up, chaos, chaos, chaos, change diaper (x3), more chaos, and then run out the door and up to the daycare with a screaming baby and only half the things I need for the day. I want to change this to: wake up, feed the baby and myself, get the baby ready, get myself ready, and then walk out the door when I intend to with everyone happy and all the things we both need for the day and the neighbors impressed with what an awesome mother I am instead of horrified by the blur of chaos and screaming that normally flies past.

My goal has two parts. First, I hope that during July, Layla will get older (which she will, since she always does) and because of this she will be better and more predictable by the time the Studly Hubby goes back to work. Second, I hope to work out a better system so that I can just get everything together and leave no matter what is going on with the baby. This is much harder than it sounds. But, if I am successful, it will be a big step towards a new routine at work that I can be happy with - modified from the old routine, but hopefully good enough.