I finished the first week at the new job. It's a mixed bag, really: I'm happy to have a job, I'm not happy about how little I'm going to be seeing my child. She's sleeping great at night, and she's now sleeping a total of 11-12 hours each night. Which means: I get home a little before 6:00, and she's down for the night between 6:30 and 7:00. She will usually wake up for another feeding between 8:00 and midnight, but it's a total of about 20 minutes or so that she's up, and then she sleeps through until somewhere between 5:30 and 6:45. And I drop her off at Carmen's at 7:00, and I'm off to work. Yeah. That's going to suck. I have a feeling I'm really going to be living for the weekends.
It was great, though: they observe Lincoln's birthday (which is also my dad's birthday), and they observe it on the actual date. Which meant that I had Thursday off. And they also observe Presidents' Day, this coming Monday, so I'm at the dawn of a three-day weekend. So my first two weeks are short weeks, which is pretty nice. (Sadly, though, there won't be another holiday until Memorial Day, so I'm looking at a pretty lengthy dry spell. Can't have everything, I suppose.) Nice to have a soft landing, as my friend Ryan would say.
Last weekend, we went down to my dad's house for a pre-birthday visit. Dad is doing surprisingly well, physically, but cognitively he's not going so great. He's having difficulty with mental functioning like math, reading and writing. He's supposed to be doing some brain-boosting video games and the like, but I'm not sure he's able to get his computer functioning in order to get going on that. He's also almost certainly going to have to move out of his house. He's 8 payments delinquent, and even if his lender approves a modification of his loan, I'm not sure the payments will be affordable. He got approved for Medi-Cal, but it's a share-of-cost benefit, and what they expect him to cover before Medi-Cal kicks in is about half of his monthly income. I'll be applying for some other stuff for him -- IHSS and an application for low-income housing -- but I'm just not sure what's best for him, or what's possible.
That said, it was a pretty nice visit. TM and I were both pretty tired, having hosted TM's family the night before for a little dinner party, so it was nice to have a mellow little visit and go to bed early. And Kid A did great -- slept straight through the night, something like 11 hours without a feeding. On the drive down, I was venting a little bit to TM -- sometimes it gets to me that my dad isn't normal, and I end up feeling sad and sorry for myself that we can't take advantage of all the fun things there are to do in that area -- and TM said, "Well, let's just start doing things that we want to do when we come visit. We have a family now; let's spend some time with your dad, and also spend some time doing stuff with Kid A." TM's parents are great about balancing together time and not-together time when they visit relatives or go on trips with their children and grandchildren, so he's had some good modeling in that respect. I, on the other hand, am blessed with two parents who can never quite get enough of their children, and so there's a lot of guilt (especially with my dad) about not doing/giving enough. And so, last Sunday morning, we got up when Kid A did, fed her, went out to the local coffee shop for our Salinas coffee ritual, came back to dad's and did a few more things around the house for him, and then broke the news that we were going to Monterey to take Kid A to the aquarium. He did his usual I'm-upset-because-you're-leaving grumbling, and I felt my usual guilt for not doing/giving/being enough, and then we left. And had a GREAT TIME.
Oh, the aquarium. I love that place. Kid A was her best Little Mesmo* and could not get enough of looking at the fish. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is an incredible, amazing place. The tanks themselves are stunning: lots of contrasting colors and interesting, unpredictable movement, perfect for a baby to get transfixed by. She stared and stared and stared all day, was happy in the Ergo carrier, and only fussed when she was hungry. We spent probably four hours there, longer than I would have expected, and she never cried, never fell asleep (even though I'm sure she was probably tired). When we left, we walked up Lighthouse Avenue to Gianni's Pizza (a place with a lot of memories for me, not to mention delicious pizza), and within a block or two, she was asleep.
* Little Mesmo is a name we have for her when she's utterly transfixed (i.e. "mesmerized") by something. It's that look of wonder and awe that all babies get when they are looking at something new, and wonderful, and awesome. "Little Mesmo" is also an idea we have for a series of books that we joke about from time to time, where the same story is told from two different perspectives, the baby's and the parent's. Yeah. Like that's ever going to happen. But we like to joke about it sometimes.
I'm turning 36 in a couple of weeks. No, actually, in 8 days. I told TM that what I want for my birthday is for him to do all the parenting one night a week so that I can go to a yoga class. We agreed on Tuesday nights, and even though it's not my birthday yet, we agreed that I would start going when I started working. So, last Tuesday night, I went to my first yoga class since before Kid A was born. It was great, and really hard. The studio is easy walking distance from our place (ah, pedestrian living, how I will miss you when you're gone), so from the time I leave the house until the time I get home, it's only 2 hours of being gone, but boy, it's some quality self-care time. I'm very happy about it. (And, of course, I'm waaay out of shape and way heavier than I'm happy with, so it also kind of sucks. But you gotta start somewhere, no?)
Ok, she's waking up from a nice, hour-long nap, so I'm off. Happy Valentine's Day to one and all!
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