Feeling Groovy

We made it through 12 days of vacation, 3 airports, 4 planes, 2 hotels, several restaurants, 2 ferry rides, a bus ride, 2 sick family members... and then, just 2 days at daycare and BAM Miles ends up with a head wound and a cold. Sigh.

Mr. Ibis was somewhat hallucinatory and insane last night as Miles kept waking up crying and Mr. I began to imagine that he was laughing at us. In his defense, he (Mr. I) was running on 2 hours of sleep in 28 hours so he was a wee bit crazy. He ended up just going to work early (early as in midnight), which is just as well as Miles had a pretty rough night overall. Poor bean. Poor beans, plural, I suppose... all of us. But three little cups of coffee and I'm doing fine!

People take vacations as a way to rest and recoup, but mine was kind of the opposite, and yet yielded the desired result anyway: refreshment. In a way I was able to see how crazy life could be, and get some perspective on just how manageable life actually is. Not that traveling is a normal way of life, but I'm referring to life at my dad and stepmom's house, which is extremely overwhelming on a good day. I love them dearly, but they are the kind of people who thrive on chaos, and I am not. And most babies are not. Trying to put a baby to sleep in a house where the TV is blasting and four other people are yelling from room to room is challenging beyond the normal level of baby sleep challenges. Miles did remarkably well but I gained a new appreciation for our quiet house (besides those darn squeaky old floors), and even the Unicorn, whom I'd thought of as frequently annoying, but who is actually far quieter and subtler than my dad's dog, as it turns out.

I'm starting to hit my stride in the whole baby-mama thing, which I'm sure is normal as I get a little experience under my belt, but also, I have to say that the older he gets, the more I am enjoying him. True, I have less free time (I am currently squandering a naptime on blogging instead of showering, oh dear), but it's so much fun to watch him explore and learn and grow. I can so easily just plant myself on the floor with him for an hour, playing and watching him crawl around. Some people led me to believe that having a newborn was the easy part and this was going to be harder, which I suppose is true in some ways since newborns sleep a lot, but emotionally it's so much more rewarding to care for a little human in ways that go beyond the rudimentary feeding/soothing/cleaning tasks of basic infant care. Cliched but true, it's fun to begin to see old spaces through new eyes - his fresh, curious eyes, always on the lookout for novelty and challenge.