Baby diary: 56 weeks
Jan. 8th, 2020 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petronia Back to work this Monday. Mornings are... doable: twice the prep in twice the time. I'm up by 6:30, earlier than Alan, out the door before 8:30 for the bus, 8:50 drop-off, and at my desk by 9. Evenings are hairier, because there's no express. Right now I'm leaving at 4 to pick up Alan and home before 6, detouring on the 178 downtown and back on the Green line. The 12 gets us home before 5 but involves a dangerously icy walk through the park, which will be correspondingly lovely this summer (gotta look on the bright side), when Alan might do a bit of toddling on his own. Of course, if I leave at 4 I should be at my desk by 8, and therein lies the conundrum. :P My boss is very understanding but the workload isn't going to be leisurely all year.
As it is, we're used to the bus and subway route, but the difference between a 2-3pm pickup and a 4pm pickup is that Alan is hungry and thirsty and tired, and must then be stuffed into a snowsuit and a baby carrier and forced to endure rush hour. (For that matter, I'm hungry and thirsty; I used to have a 4pm snack and keep working until the rush was done. XD;) He hasn't had a full public meltdown yet, but I will definitely have to show up with a bottle and a snack. On Monday I'd bought a loaf of multigrain bread to take home--the lugubriously healthy and artisanal kind with flaxseed and all sorts of other chewy bits--and he ate two whole slices on the bus, crust and all. Yesterday... I fed him half a tuna sandwich and took a taxi.
After I get him home, it's bath, dinner (his and mine), and bedtime routine, in roughly that order. No time to cook, really, or to relax over food, or to have anyone over. But after Alan goes down I have time to do a bit of wind-down yoga or read a book.
Today his grandparents picked him up, and I nipped down to the pub for a pint, as the English say. I think I'm going to have to ask my parents to come twice a week: once on a weekend, and once on a weekday afternoon/evening, so I can do something--anything--other than the second shift. And heck, even a taxi twice a week costs a fraction of what it would to buy and maintain a car.
***
Alan learnt to clap his hands this week, and is very pleased with himself. Still not walking, won't let me help him walk either, but I think he's getting a bit frustrated. All his peers can walk! He practices standing by leaning against a table, or me, and shifting his weight away and back. He also pays a little more attention to books, but only to Where's Spot?, which has both peekaboo flaps and repeated uses of the word "no."
As it is, we're used to the bus and subway route, but the difference between a 2-3pm pickup and a 4pm pickup is that Alan is hungry and thirsty and tired, and must then be stuffed into a snowsuit and a baby carrier and forced to endure rush hour. (For that matter, I'm hungry and thirsty; I used to have a 4pm snack and keep working until the rush was done. XD;) He hasn't had a full public meltdown yet, but I will definitely have to show up with a bottle and a snack. On Monday I'd bought a loaf of multigrain bread to take home--the lugubriously healthy and artisanal kind with flaxseed and all sorts of other chewy bits--and he ate two whole slices on the bus, crust and all. Yesterday... I fed him half a tuna sandwich and took a taxi.
After I get him home, it's bath, dinner (his and mine), and bedtime routine, in roughly that order. No time to cook, really, or to relax over food, or to have anyone over. But after Alan goes down I have time to do a bit of wind-down yoga or read a book.
Today his grandparents picked him up, and I nipped down to the pub for a pint, as the English say. I think I'm going to have to ask my parents to come twice a week: once on a weekend, and once on a weekday afternoon/evening, so I can do something--anything--other than the second shift. And heck, even a taxi twice a week costs a fraction of what it would to buy and maintain a car.
***
Alan learnt to clap his hands this week, and is very pleased with himself. Still not walking, won't let me help him walk either, but I think he's getting a bit frustrated. All his peers can walk! He practices standing by leaning against a table, or me, and shifting his weight away and back. He also pays a little more attention to books, but only to Where's Spot?, which has both peekaboo flaps and repeated uses of the word "no."
