Spring Resolutions

Now that I'm home full-time, I'm rediscovering the subtle science behind planning my own week. Even in my old job, I loved being busy with urgent needs. In the rare moment when all was quiet, I had to intentionally dig into a long-term project or I would start to feel...bored, despite the stack of non-urgent projects sitting in my inbox. The urgent essentially planned my weeks for me. Without that, discipline (i.e. anti-procrastination) had to kick in.

At home, the same applies. Caring for Noah, preparing for weekend plans, attending weekday activities, working on freelance work, running errands - various urgent tasks often eat up my weekdays. But then there are days when the urgent subsides and I see a blank slate in front of me. There are piles of projects all around, but none calling to me. Sometimes it's a relief, other times it's disconcerting. For those other times, I've decided to create a list of goals to help structure my free time:

-- Babyproof our kitchen and bathrooms
-- Clean out the garage (including pressure-washing the floor)
-- Get involved in a service project (with Noah)
-- Organize our library (currently scattered across the house)
-- Get in shape (which may involve a YMCA membership)
-- Read the Bible every day
-- Read book club selections (Having a Mary Heart is next)
-- Decorate our great room (part of prepping the house for resale)
-- Brighten someone else's day at least 1/week
-- Organize my grocery shopping (when, coupons, etc)
-- Create a weekly routine

It would be easy to overcommit in an effort to fill my time with urgency, but as you can see, the non-urgent projects are worthwhile if I just allow room for them in my schedule.

If you have suggestions for ways you handle free time or set priorities, I'd love to hear them! And I'll let you know how this goes once I've actually tried to put it into practice.

Noah and a friend enjoying some non-urgent time under a tree
(Courtesy of Southern Photo)

My torso is made of plastic!

After a weekend spent with lots of friends and their many boy babies, Noah had a welcome visitor this morning - A GIRL! Granted, Mommy is also a girl, but they don't count when they're almost 3 times your size.

Then this afternoon, Noah made a startling discovery: there's a diaper down there! Soft, durable, and readily accesible for tug-of-war, it turns out the diaper is right near his other favorite toys: his feet. Now his changing-table toy (a stuffed bee) is even more important to distract him from interfering in diaper changes. Unfortunately, this new development also gave me a glimpse into the future. I can already see the day he discovers that unlike his feet, the diaper is removeable... (cringe)

Breakthrough!

This morning, I stuck my finger in Noah's mouth (don't worry - I don't do that with most people) and felt something new! We had a little party at 7am.

The only challenge was figuring out how to capture such a triumph. Mommy held Noah while Daddy took pictures, adjusted lighting, and finally held open Noah's lower lip. As a result of all that effort, perhaps you can see what's barely visible in person...

Where's Noah?

Ok, so maybe he's not too hard to find. I have noticed that my photography has a certain theme to it these days. While I like to think our house is not child-centered, it seems our camera is. Ah well - at least there are other family members in the shots...

Unexpected Consequences

I spent the morning at the dentist today because I had a baby 7 months ago.

Huh?

I know - who'd of thunk it? According to my dentist, new moms are notorious for gritting their teeth or clenching their jaw because they get up repeatedly during the night. All that nocturnal up-and-down causes stress and disturbs their usual deep sleep, leading them to shave away at their molars, crack teeth, and form cavities during the night.

When I told a friend that I was being fitted for a nightguard, she said she had to get one about 6 months after her firstborn.

First you lose your hair. Then you lose your mind. Now you lose your teeth. By the time Noah is 18, there may not be much of me left...except the few extra pounds I want to lose.

Meanwhile, Noah is busy trying to get some teeth, and reminding me why I really don't mind losing all that other stuff after all...

The Art of Napping

I spent 20 of my 30 years in school. Clearly on some level, I enjoyed school. Yet the past year has shown me a startling gap in our curriculum. School prepared me for so many professions I was never likely to pursue full-time -- medicine, law, nuclear physics -- and never prepared me for the one I was most likely to become: a parent. Society provides abundant proof that parenting is not all instinctive. And any baby store will tell you that parenting is infinitely complicated, requiring lots of equipment. Thankfully, I learned a lot from my own parents. But now I'm on the job, and there's still a lot to figure out.

Which brings me to the art of napping. One would think sleeping is pretty straightforward: You get tired. You lie down. You wake up. You get tired. You lie down. Etc. No sir -- Not when you're 6 months old. Noah's nap schedule was erratic when he was in daycare every other day, usually getting 2-4 naps/day of 30-45 minutes each. This presented a dilemma for his mother: Should she stick with the catnaps or were they an unhealthy habit?

I read and talked to other parents about it, made a few adjustments, and gradually Noah cleared up the debate. Since I've been home full-time, he has moved to the textbook nap schedule (2 naps of 1.5-2 hours each plus a late afternoon catnap). It's lovely. He's more rested and predictable, and I get real blocks of time for other projects. But now that we've found our rhythm, the question is how much to protect it.

Do I let him sleep in?
Do I wake him up early to go meet a friend?
Do I skip a nap to go out? If so, which one?
Do I keep him out late to finish an event?
How many days can I mess with the schedule and still go back to it?

I've realized that unless you're home all day everyday, napping is an art. So far, I'm still in the euphoria of a new-and-improved schedule, so I probably err on the side of letting it influence my plans too much. I hear myself saying no because "Noah needs to nap" a little too often. Yet there's some deep compulsion in me that wants him to get his naps every day - that hates to see bags form under his eyes, that doesn't want to wake him from a peaceful slumber, that doesn't want him to revert to 30 minute catnaps all day. That side is currently winning. But I don't want it to take over. I don't want to become the rigid mom with a demanding baby. And I don't want other priorities to suffer. There must be a balance.

So each day, I learn a little more what that balance looks like for us. For example, just in the last couple of weeks I've learned...
1. I don't want to let Noah's naps impede our church attendance.
2. He can miss a nap, but plan time to make up for it later that day.
3. If an event is at our house, I don't have to worry about his schedule.
4. If I mess up one day, we can recover the next.
5. If we have more kids, I'll likely look back on this post and laugh, so I might as well relax now.

Dada BaBa Dada

I'm not sure we can count it as his first word, but Noah started babbling with consonants today! Even better, it sounded an awful lot like "Dada"!! For at least the last month, he's been cooing a ton and throwing in a consonant every once in a while. But today was the first time he's produced something resembling syllables. I got it on video, but video doesn't seem to appear when I upload it to my blog. So you'll just have to trust me - and visit us soon to hear it for yourself.