A feature of having an infant that I had forgotten is the thing where there will be like 3 really basic household tasks that could do with getting done but cannot without baby-screaming. Laundry, dishes, cooking, unpacking a package, things of that nature. I will be sitting, looking at a pile of laundry I folded last night, and think, well? Is that worth the screaming it would produce? Or do I wait for a nap, as in a proper in-crib nap and not a lap one (lap ones are cuddly but not compatible with accomplishing anything else, except I suppose this newsletter) and then do it? Each such nap allows for maybe one chore, and you have to triage these.
There’s advice about going with the flow, and learning to live with mess. But what if you live with mess already, and this is a matter of, will there be clean dishes for the next mealtime? Clean toddler clothes for the next schoolday? The advice always seems to imagine a housewife with no tolerance for a speck of dust, as versus the type of household maintenance that is truly day-to-day needed. ‘Let the dishes pile up’ ok and then what? A solid 45 minutes of dishes, to the sound of a screaming baby.
The other advice is to get someone else to do chores. And as intriguing as it is to dip into the well of it-takes-a-village matriarchy that bears no relevance to my life, wherein a community of women (which women? the ones I know are working, or on maternity leave themselves) simply step in to move the laundry to the dryer when the 40 minutes or whatever are up. The reality of this would be to go “Downton”-style and hire someone, I mean not just to clean occasionally (not something we do, either, but more plausible) but to deal with the non-baby-specific tasks. Weirdly enough, there is no butler budget.
Did you know that the actor who plays the butler on “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” is some sort of venture capitalist in an episode of “Death in Paradise”? Where is my Nobel for immediately noticing this?
So things just sort of sit. Why were there three tote bags on the floor, next to the hook where they should be hanging up? Because the day literally had not allowed for dealing with that. Why are late-baby-stage toys still mixed in the bins with the ones for a 3-year-old? Because toy-sorting is a noisy task not compatible with a downstairs nap, and I have not slept enough to transfer this current nap to the crib upstairs. And if I were to do that, would toy-sorting be the first priority? What about the muffins I keep threatening to make? Ah right but the dishes that would produce. Also the outgrown clothes need to be moved out of the current-clothes drawers. Also, also.
And all of this with a spouse who does a ton. (Do we think I brought in a toddler through the snow, then shoveled the stairs to the house? Certainly not.) I don’t know. I mean I know in the grand scheme of things that it passes, but that knowledge doesn’t produce clean toddler socks.
Did I notice we had leftover disposable cups and start using those because I could not I mean truly could not wash another glass? Apologies to the environment (I’m sure that their recyclability doesn’t matter) but I did, I did. The new dishwasher is meant to arrive in just over a week and be installed presumably at some point after that, so. Will believe it when I see it sort of thing.
What you can do with a baby is go outside. They prefer outdoor naps. (Yes every last baby, I surveyed all of them.) Which is something, but then there’s Covid. It used to be, you head outside with the baby then go inside somewhere: library baby time, a coffee shop, a mall, a museum (lol). Now, it’s more like, you walk through Canadian snow until you can’t bear it anymore. There’s no stopping to feed and change the baby because the season for doing that outside is done, and even if you technically can go inside to do something quick, you can’t really sit inside so what’s the point.
What this leaves is, you walk with the baby in the stroller, maybe buy some groceries, maybe walk with another baby-and-mom, then get the bassinnet with still-sleeping baby inside your many-step-having house, and then try to get some warm layers off so the baby doesn’t overheat but also doesn’t wake up from the extra-deep motion-induced nap. Or carrier plus dog-walk, but once ice season begins, that’s less of an option. Days just pass and despite the thing where I am home and off work, exceedingly little gets done.
I hope that this “thing” is cathartic for you. Writers gonna write.
It’s all about realistic expectations. (Not my forte though.)
Sounds as if you are doing just fine.