As I typed that first line, my baby woke up from his nap. My god.
Thirty minutes later, I've set up my son's play area with toys and books and stuffed animals. Still he keeps looking up at me and occasionally fake-crying.
Oh, he slept for a good 20 minutes earlier. He was out cold when I put him down for what was supposed to be his only nap for the day. The nap should have been more like two hours. There goes some of the things I wanted to get done.
My son is 13 months old now. I wish I had a numbered list of advice to give other parents, but some days we really don't get anything done. Except for this whole child-rearing thing. I suppose that's pretty important. Okay, I know it's the most important thing I'll ever do, but that doesn't erase any of the mom guilt.
That mom guilt, though!
I breastfed my son for a year. Still, there was guilt that maybe BLW (baby-led weaning) would have been better for him, but he seems healthy and eager enough to eat adult food.
Then there's cloth diapering. My husband and I contemplated cloth diapering for, you know, a minute, then decided it was too much for us. To be fair, I actually did read up on it and just really wasn't convinced that's what we needed to do. Except I still feel like I should be doing it, especially since most of the moms I've met through this great group called Hike It Baby (No, seriously, check it out. It's a great group for getting outdoors and meeting other parents and kids.) do the cloth diapering. So you know what? I signed up for a Curious About Cloth class, and it's tomorrow. I will probably be the only one there with a kid this old (or who isn't still pregnant), but that's okay. Even if we decide not to do it still, I'll feel better about whatever decision we make. My thought process was, hey, there's still time to do it if we change our minds. And there is.
That's kind of been our guide to parenting so far: Do what you think is best right now with the information you have. It's probably a little looser of a parenting style than many others', but it keeps us sane. Well, maybe saner than we would have been? Oh, who knows.
To get on with the blog I thought I was going to write, I have this inner dialogue that happens every day. If I decide to read while my son is napping, a little voice inside my head says there's probably something more important you should be doing. Another part of me says I need some down time like this and I need to stay sharp (Ha! Except for mombrain, am I right?), so keep reading. I've finished three books in the last month. That's three more than I read the entire first year of my kid's life. That counts as an accomplishment, right?
Except there's the dishes. They really get out of hand. The more I cook, the more there are. The more I cook, the more money we save. The more I cook, the less time I have to do other stuff, like working out.
Aah, exercise. The Hike It Baby group has helped tons, but after talking with my new general practitioner, she said I also need non-baby exercise at least twice a week. That means I had to break the news to my husband that he would have to watch my son so I can go to the gym two nights a week for 30-minute workouts. That look in his eye, though, makes me feel guilty. It says something like, "But I just worked all day." And the look in my eye says, "I did, too, punk. Don't devalue me."
This leads me to the weekend of Mother's Day. I had previously asked for my Mother's Day present to be "a day off." Then I was invited to "Girls' Night at the Lightning Ranch" - a friend's house that, yes, has a cool name so how could I miss that - and my husband agreed to watch our son for that, too. And then there was the moment he realized those two days would be back to back, and I heard him tell our son, within earshot of me, "Well, I guess it will be just you and me for the entire weekend." Stop the drama. Just stop right there. Woes you.
Anyway, somehow while I was at the Lightning Ranch, he managed to swiffer the floors, do the dishes and light a candle that made the house smell like a pumpkin cookie farm. Way to overdo it and make me feel like crap for not getting crap done. I mean, how awesome that he did that so I didn't have to.
Guilt, guilt, guilt.
I guess I'll just keep trucking, and one day I'll figure out how to be a Homemaker Extraordinaire.
Or not. Maybe I'm already doing an excellent job and I'll be at one with it one day.
If you have a numbered list of ways to eliminate that guilt, let me know.
Because I really should be interacting with my kid. Or maybe he's liking this independent playtime?
Aaagh!
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