Adjusting

The baby is asleep, the house is relatively clean and the editing site is down for maintenance until 5 p.m., so this is as good a time as any to re-emerge in the blog world.

As recently as yesterday it was impossible to think I'd ever again have the free time for luxuries like blogging. (Until all our kids are away at college, anyway.) Not to be melodramatic. But Claire alternated crying and nursing from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday night/Monday (yesterday) morning, then mostly stopped crying but continued to fight sleep until 1 p.m. yesterday, at which point we both crashed hard. I did get a shower but that was all I accomplished yesterday. She was back to her fairly normal three-hour stretches last night so we both feel a lot saner today.

For me, I think the hardest thing about having a baby (at this point) is not being able to plan my schedule very well. I realize we're not even three weeks into this and it will be vastly improved in a matter of weeks or months. But it's frustrating to feel like every day is subject to the whims of her sleeping/eating schedule -- it's almost impossible to make even simple plans, like meeting someone for coffee or lunch, which is one of the main things I want to do. And if planning a lunch date is tricky, a week at the beach (or better yet, a long weekend with just Matt and me) seems almost impossible to pull off. All in good time, right?

The other major adjustment for me is that I'm so used to being around people almost all the time and it's weird to suddenly be spending all day basically alone in a quiet house. I'm so glad Matt's usually able to come home for lunch, and also very lucky that I can edit from home -- although I'm doing that only in bits and pieces, as it's hard to use the computer when I'm feeding, changing or just holding Claire. I think part of the reason I feel kind of cooped-up is that I haven't attempted to run yet -- but I'm planning to give it a go on Thursday (the three-week mark).

Don't get me wrong -- I'm so thankful to be able to stay home with Claire. I can't imagine having a six-week maternity leave that was already half over and knowing that in a few weeks someone else would be with her all day so I could sit in an office doing a job I probably didn't even like that much.

The astounding amount of time she spends nursing has been kind of nice in that it forces me to sit back and chill out. There's always laundry to be folded or kitchen counters to be wiped down or two-week-old emails to respond to, but there's really not a lot you can accomplish with a baby attached to you (and this baby likes to take her time with a meal). I've gotten a lot of reading done lately, and Matt and I have discovered "Mad Men" -- which I immediately loved -- and sometimes it's nice just to lean back my head and close my eyes while she eats.

Sorry not to include updated pictures with this post. Poor Claire is going to feel really neglected some day when she realizes all her friends have hundreds of photos documenting their early days and she has just a couple dozen. We are so bad at pulling out the camera, but to be fair, she's not doing anything monumental just yet. We'll try to force ourselves to get better about taking pictures as she gets older. Meanwhile, assorted friends and family (grandparents, mostly) are vigilantly taking up the slack.

I'm going to end here because Joy and Linda are coming over with dinner and I want to run to the store to get ingredients for Granny's banana pudding -- Joy's favorite (mine, too). By the way, if you haven't yet met Claire and want to witness her sweetness in person, we're now welcoming visitors, so let us know when you'd like to come!