Learning daily life

     Daily life can be one of the most boring things you ever do. I'm not talking about the things that brighten our days or make tim more interesting, I mean the daily tasks that make up most of our waking hours. Laundry, cleaning, cooking, errands, outside the home work (for some), the tasks that make us sigh when the alarm goes off and we face yet another day of the same repetitive things.

     Before Ninja baby was born I had gotten into a pretty good rhythm of things I did during the day. Crafts and sewing and movies and dancing mixed in with all the laundry, dishes, vacuuming, toilet scrubbing and other things that kept my home habitable. For the last few months I was focused on keeping the house ready to birth in at a moments notice, and making sure I had lots of time to read and watch movies and other things I enjoy. My last trimester was hard so I had some in home help(yay teenage nieces on summer vacation!)but I still kept to a nice reliable pattern. It was calm, soothing and familiar. Ninja baby messed up that pattern pretty good.

     When we first came back from the hospital, my pattern stayed close to the same. We fell into co sleeping pretty quickly and nursing side lying in bed, so I was not really waking all the way to nurse at night. We woke at close to the same times every day, and aside from more frequent breaks to nurse I just kept going. Now my little ninja is older and some things have changed. Side lying nursing has become her least favorite position, so now we wake to nurse. She can follow me crawling or cruising and hates to be alone, which slows me down and keeps me from cleaning dangerous places like the bathroom. (Incidentally, I never realized how dangerous my house was before ninja started exploring all the time.) We nurse on demand which means that I have a general idea of when she is usually hungry, but she makes her own pattern. Sometimes she skips her morning nap in favor of a toy or exploration. Sometimes she naps for three hours straight at four in the afternoon dooming us all to a later bedtime. As a person who has always found serenity in the repetitive nature of a schedule, this is very hard for me to cope with. I have to re learn daily life. And let me tell you, it's anything but boring.

     Everyday is a new adventure these days. Sometimes we spend the morning at the park, ninja loves the baby swing and waving to all the people she sees. Other days she naps instead and I clean that bathroom that I've been thinking about for days. Priorities change, and the new ones are far more interesting. Sometimes my house will be messy and my dishes stacked in the sink, but ninja will be learning to turn the pages of a book, or saying "DA DA" at the door, or reaching for a picture of Nana when I talk about her. My life is lacking in structure and firm pattern and seems to be in the throws of chaos, but I love it. It's hard some days, sure. When all I really want is a guarantee that for the next twenty minutes she will be occupied or asleep and I can do something alone, even if it's dishes. I'm learning though, i'm learning to follow her pattern and her desires and her needs wherever that may lead us. And sometimes, it's the most beautiful thing in the world to ignore everything else while your daughter signs "I love you" and climbs into your lap during your third round of peek-a-boo. That makes it all worthwhile.