Double Jeopardy: Karin, away for a couple days of work retreat in Canmore, switched me flex days so my “Wednesday Daddy Day” promptly morphed into “Friday (Plus) Daddy Weekend.” Yes, a long weekend. But, a long weekend as a single parent. Claire’s first night away from her mom — and she get’s two in a row.

Friday morning we decided to go for a long walk. Long. And at the “nearly an hour” mark my Blackberry starts buzzing, Karin having thinking she forgot her purse on the counter wants me to confirm. Claire and I were at that particular moment wandering away from the cafe where we’d stopped for tea and second breakfast, and Claire was sound asleep in her stroller. I start the rush home (a distance that at a run would have taken twenty minutes) and the bright orange stroller is manically bustling down the sidewalk, passenger stirring and driver instant messaging with his frantic wife. Is it any doubt we hit some bumps and Claire woke up?

She was grumpy for most the rest of the day. Yeah, we had a little nap after lunch. Yeah, we took the rest of the day easy, hitting the library and the grocery store for no more than an hour total. But I’m learning these days that the nap-time is king. Mess with the king, and you’re asking for trouble.

We made a mess at dinner — spaghetti — and had a pleasant bath time — splish, splash — and there were only a few peeps before morning. (Though I stayed up far later than I should have watching bad old movies that the PVR recorded.)

Day two went much better, mostly because dad respected the almighty nap-time routine. Nap number one was a mid-morning snooze that gave me a chance to sneak in a shower and some blogging (see previous entries) and nap number two followed a mini-adventure with Mr. B and Ky at the windy playground wherein the girl, dazed and glazed, made it just long enough that she was awake when I pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store — and sound asleep by the time I’d parked. We sat there for a solid forty-five minutes, she sound asleep and I burning up kilobytes on my wireless data plan. Following that a much happier little girl helped her father get groceries, visited the advancing polling station for the election (business trip that day) and settled in for a nearly perfect evening of dinner and bed-time ritual. Really. She’s never gone to be that easy for me.

Tomorrow will the be the wrap-up of our little weekend adventure, but with Karin due home shortly after lunch (and this father heeding the commands of the nap-time king) I doubt we’ll get further than a puppy walk, or something. Then back to work for some much needed rest.

Sigh. And you won’t wonder long why I’ll be in bed by ten tonight.