Update

Someone asked me today if I have a blog and I realized I had to say “no” since it’s been, what, like 8 or 9 months since I’ve posted here (?) So it made me start thinking (I try not to most of the time, you see) and I figured I’d at least post an update on what we’ve been up to lately.

Natalie is 1 year old and a full-fledged toddler now. She walks. She talks. She throws everything she gets her hands on and then says “uh oh!” like she is actually going to convince you that it was an accident. She has about 2 inches of very fine blonde hair, so fine she still looks bald. Her feet are a size 4. Her passions are balloons, dogs, her friend Jack and her little red push car. She does not care for strangers, loud noise, getting her nose wiped or being told where to go. She still thinks peek-a-boo is the most hilarious thing in the entire world. She likes her books, her baby Einstein music and her bagel & cream cheese in the morning and she wants her prune juice, bath, bedtime stories and songs in the evening. She is her own little person and the bigger she gets the more I am amazed at the intrinsic nature of temperament and personality.

And me. Well I have been home for 13 months and it’s time to go back to work. The last year has been really great and really soul sucking all at the same time. Infants require just so much of your energy and focus that it’s pretty much impossible not to lose part of yourself in the chaos. Eventually you forget what you even did before your child. And then they get older and need you less and less and you are left with this big open space where your own private life used to be.

So that is where I am at the moment. Remembering my passions and re-learning to live life for myself sometimes. And interviewing and looking for childcare. It’s a huge process and I’m worried about how Natalie will handle it all but I figure that it has to happen some time. Otherwise I’ll be one of those vacant women still at home when their kids are grown and out of the house. I have seen the slow and painful death of the mind. Let me go out in a blaze of chaos and disorganization.