"O" is for occupying a baby

There are only so many ways to fill a day. Normal people watch TV, read books, surf the Internet, have hobbies like knitting or gardening ... all that stuff. Mostly, you like the stuff you do, so you look forward to having large chunks of time to fill.

Not so much if you're the parent of a young child. One of the things that surprised me about having a kid is the way you start to treat time. Before, I enjoyed the idea of hours stretching ahead of me with nothing to do. I'd blissfully check out the bookshelf or eye my knitting basket. But now, I have these hours each day which I have to spend occupying a 4 month old and filling them is sometimes a scary proposition. None of the things I like to do will to occupy a baby. Also, even the things a baby likes, don't occupy a baby for more than 5-10 min at any given time.

So in between his naps, which I try to put him down for every 2 hours, I live my life in five minute spurts. We look at a book for a few minutes, and then I hold the book while Alexander tries to eat it. When he gets frustrated, we move on to the baby gym. When that's boring (so, 10 min maybe) we go look at the animals in his crib mobile for two minutes. He stands up and chews on them, and then I let him lay beneath them and try to hit them for five minutes. When he gets annoyed, we put on his rattle socks and he tries to take them off and eat them. Then he takes his socks off and screams at me because they don't taste good.

Then we walk around and look in mirrors and he watches me drink coffee or pour a glass of water. Then we run his toes in the water. Then maybe we go back to the book again, because by this point he's totally forgotten about it and it's a New Exciting Thing. My little goldfish, right?

You might note that all of these activities, other than lying under the play gym (and really, these days he prefers to "sit" in front of it, which requires my help) and being strapped into his chair with a book to look at, involve both of us. So when I want to, say, get dressed, get my hair out of my face and put on enough make-up so I don't scare people on the street, I have to put him down. He's not fond of the whole being put down thing, and tells me, loudly, what he thinks about it when I try. However, I've come close to putting my eye out with my mascara wand while holding him enough times to have stopped even trying to multi-task in that particular manner. So the other day I tried something new. I'm going to momma hell, aren't I? I promise to only do it when I really, really can't bear to listen to him scream any more.

Anyway, if you are reading this and you don't have kids yet but you want to know what my days are like, you should try filling up two hours with activities that take no more than 10 min each. And just to make it realistic, make sure that the things you are doing are really, really, really boring. Then repeat those things at two hour intervals day after day after day after day. Luckily, just when I think I'll go mad with boredom, either someone invites us to coffee or a play group, or he gets excited about something. It's amazing how one laugh or smile can cancel out about 45 min of those boring activities in a flash.

Good thing he's cute, eh?