Sorry... to E for not being able to catch a full nap because he's always being strapped into the car seat to go drive big brother here and fetch him there. The repercussions of this are miserable... non-stop tortured crying by an overtired baby and mama with seriously frazzled nerves.
I am just comparing T's babyhood to E's and feeling really bummed for E... compared to his big brother, he gets so little individual attention.
A typical day for a 5-month-old T would have been: wake up, eat, be held and talked to, take a 2-3 hour nap in undisturbed quietude about 3 hours after waking up, get up, eat more, be played with and held and talked to, take another nap, maybe go visit a neighbor... rarely go anywhere in the car. Have full attention of both parents in evening, be put to bed after being rocked, nursed and sung to sleep.
A typical day for 5-month-old E: get up, be fed, sit in a chair and watch mama prepare breakfast for big brother and then watch them eat it, be buckled into car seat, drive to school, take mini car-nap, come home and wake up from mini car-nap, lie on floor and have mama try to get him to play with toys, eat, take another little nap around 1030 or 11, get buckled into car seat again (usually being woken up from nap in the process of buckling), go to school to pick up big brother, watch mama make lunch for big brother and then watch them eat it... accompany mama and big brother on walks around neighborhood or go to appointments... attempt to fall asleep but be disturbed by big brother, or fall asleep and wake up 20 minutes later. Rinse and repeat until evening comes, baby is overtired and crabby and will only fall asleep after much exhausted crying.
Today at least, after the third disruption of nap (instance one: waking up too early for some unknown reason after having been awake for 1.5 hours in the middle of the night; instance two: mama attempting to remove him from car seat after dropping brother off at school, because he sweats like crazy in the car seat because the fabric doesn't breathe and three: being moved while napping into the car seat to go pick big brother up at school) and third onset of full-bore screaming and crying which could only be partly remedied by being carried (upright only, thankyouverymuch), jostled, bounced and rocked, he fell asleep and I lay him down for a nap in his bed with the door tightly closed. I managed to pin the cat to the floor right as she was trying to disappear under the bed in that room and shag her into the next room but only narrowly escaped disaster when T came up the stairs singing some sort of rhyming nonsense at the top of his lungs. I guess my Maternal Look of Death worked because he piped down for 15 seconds, long enough for me to get out of the room and shut the door before he woke E up AGAIN.
More to report about hearing loss but that will be another day.
