Happy New Year!
New Year's Day is, of course, the traditional time to beat oneself up over the failures of the last year and make highly specific and probably unachievable goals for the next. The existence of N. has short-circuited both of these processes. As I've expressed on FB earlier this week, I read several 2013 retrospective pieces from friends and thought "I've been so unproductive... but wait, I grew a person in me." And I know that any goals I make for the next year will have to fit around caring for him. (For instance, the first part of this paragraph and the last were written an hour and ten minutes apart, as N. woke up and I had to deal with changing him, feeding him and playing with him. It would have been even longer, but he is now enjoying some 'daddy cuddles' and I get a few minutes free to do this.)
It has been very easy to not do very much since he's been born, and not really have goals for the day beyond caring for him except little things like 'do a load of washing', 'go shopping', 'go to parents' group', 'go to social event'. This is mostly because as Benj is taking long service leave, I feel obliged to let him enjoy this time off work too, so we've been lazing around a lot. Not to belittle the overwhelming demands of 'caring for N.' - we are finally on top of a lot of things, but his patterns seem to change every few days. We spend LOTS of the day feeding him, playing with him, holding him, settling him to sleep, bathing and changing him, etc. So it only seems fair that a lot of the rest of the day is relaxed. But when Benj goes back to work, things will need to be different and I'll need to get into a new routine, one that tries to have a structure to my day and week and month.
I'm going to try to set up a 'crochet station' near his playmat, for example, so I can crochet for a few minutes while he's happily occupied. He doesn't really need more than voice input from me while it is moving around. If I have the project in a bag, it can just sit next to the mat and I hope I won't forget to work on it.
I think that is the key - having projects set up in easily accessible places so I can snatch minutes of time without having to waste them searching out materials.
I'm also going to vary things and listen to more Craftsy lessons while I'm feeding (mostly I've been reading on my Kindle or going online on my phone). I've been going a bit crazy over Craftsy lately, which will be the subject of a whole other post.
