When a cow on rollerblades isn’t enough
Last night for dinner I made a labour-intensive recipe, a Moroccan vegetable pie with from-scratch chickpea crust. The ingredients and directions were a full page in a magazine, and it took almost an hour and a half to create.
Eric made a comment about my always picking complicated, hard new recipes and it got me thinking about the state of my post-baby brain.
Parenting Lucy is challenging. It’s all-consuming, demanding and a constant test of patience, innovation and time management. I spend a lot of time at a baby’s level: bouncing around singing, dancing, reading books, playing with toys, nuturing.
It’s about being silly and fun and stimulating her, but not so much me. The results from the behaviour — smiles, laughs, flailing limbs, joy, developing new skills — are the rewards. But I have to admit getting there – and spending ALL DAY doing it — can leave my brain feeling a little numb (dumb?) by the time bedtime hits.
I think you use a whole other side of your brain at this stage, and it sometimes leaves the grown-up part — the analytical, brain storming, processing, idea forming side — a little limp. Malnourished? Understimulated?
So that’s why I need to do things like make complicated recipes and read books and surf the Internet and do crossword puzzles and have big-kid, non-baby conversations with friends and family. That’s why we go out almost every day, to the mall or grocery store or lunch, so I can drive the car and interact with adults and smile with pride as people cluck over my offspring.
This does not mean I’m ready to go back to work. I don’t miss the politics, the interviews, the driving, the, you know, WORK. This does not mean that parenting is easy, because hot damn, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
It means that sometimes crinkly stuffed bugs and diapers and MooMoo Goes to the City and yes, even the smiles that make my heart sing aren’t enough to keep me whole.
And I think I owe it to Lucy to be that way.
Possibly related posts:
There is currently one response
Just remember that 10 minutes down the road is always a semi-adult distraction (ok, to be fair, it is limited in July and August with me hardly being there and all but after that…)and if that is a way that I can help you (still trying to figure that out) then I will be more than glad to do it