March 2024
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Mini Break

I’m still waiting to hear how my adviser liked my thesis. Every time I get an email in my school inbox that’s not from him, I am simultaneously relieved and disappointed. The darn thing is 75 pages long, and he’s only had it for a couple of days, so I’m not surprised that he doesn’t have comments for me yet.  I keep telling myself that it’s a good sign that he didn’t write back right away to tell me how awful it was.

It seemed counterproductive to keep working on revisions before I get some feedback. I don’t particularly want to spend several hours revising a section only to find out that he thinks I should cut it entirely. So, I decided to take the weekend off.

And it was glorious.

I won’t bore you with the full details, because it was a lot of sitting on the floor, playing peek-a-boo. So here are the highlights:

Lilian was wide-eyed at bushy-tailed by 6:30am on both Saturday and Sunday. We made the most of it, and went out for breakfast on Saturday morning. You know you were up early when you see the senior set making their way in as you’re leaving. I will have to keep that restaurant in mind for future restaurant. It was full of parents with tiny children. Which makes it a fantastic place to take our tiny child and not have to worry about getting the stink eye from anyone if she has an epic meltdown.

I used nap time as an opportunity to do my nails.

Nail Art

We don’t live in the most walkable of neighborhoods, but we got in touch with our inner hippies on Saturday night and walked to the grocery store as a family. I carried Lilian on my back, Kristian hauled all of the groceries. The walk is… less than scenic.

Scenic

But, what can I say? I miss walking places. Someday, we’ll move back to civilization. For now, we’ll keep walking places that people with more common sense would drive to. We spent a good chunk of the walk talking about walks that we can do this spring and summer. They just put in a bike path at the end of our street, so I think we’re going to get a little bike trailer and go for rides as well.

Kristian was kind enough to spend the last couple of weekends taking Lilian out of the house so that I could spend some quality time writing. I thought I’d return the favor and take her somewhere so that he could have some time to himself. I don’t know what it says about him that he chose to spend his “free” time working on some home improvement projects. Personally, I would have taken a nap.

Lilian and I went to a meetup where we sang with other parents (mostly moms, a couple of dads) and cooed about how big everyone’s babies are getting. The last time we went to a meetup, Lilian had no idea what was going on. Now? She could sit up all on her own and play with the maracas and interact with the other babies.

Who taught my little baby how to sit up like that?

Little Sitter

While we were at the meetup, she took a bit of a header off my lap. Luckily, she was lying on her belly at the time and I was sitting on the floor. So she only fell a few inches. It was still one of those moments where the whole room gets really, really quiet. Until your baby realizes what she happened and starts screaming bloody murder. I was able to soothe her pretty quickly and she doesn’t seem any worse for the wear. Although she does have a nice red mark on her forehead.

I was really hoping that Kristian would be the first parent to drop the baby.

In a weird way, I’m kindof glad that it happened. I knew she was getting stronger and more mobile, but I didn’t realize how good she’d gotten at launching herself into space. And now I’ve learned a valuable lesson about keeping an iron grip on her when she’s wriggling around on my lap. The lesson was just as valuable as it would have been with me sitting on one of the kitchen stools, but with far less brain damage.

If this is what life can be like when you don’t have a deadline looming over you for weeks and weeks, I think I’m going to like it. Kristian and I are already making plans for a couple of family vacations that we want to take (a long weekend in NYC, getting together with my step-dad’s family for Thanksgiving). And we’ve decided that we need to go somewhere for a weekend, just the two of us. I have grand plans for doing some sort of non-baby friendly activity, like skiing or white water rafting. But sleeping is also an attractive (and affordable!) option.

We also used the weekend to catch up with some friends and family members that we haven’t had time to hang out with. It’s nice to not be a hermit.

How was your weekend? And if you could do anything for a weekend without your kid(s), what would it be?

4 comments to Mini Break

  • Deirdre

    Thank you for helping US not be hermits! It was so nice to see you two – before you know it we’ll be celebrating your graduation, and right after that Lillian will be packing up those maracas and heading to college!

  • Congrats on getting your thesis finished! What an awesome feeling!!

  • I looooove de-hermiting with you!

  • Thanks! It still needs some editing, but I must be on the right track if nobody has written back to say how awful it is. :p

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