{"id":3323,"date":"2010-11-20T02:44:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-20T06:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=3323"},"modified":"2010-11-20T02:44:16","modified_gmt":"2010-11-20T06:44:16","slug":"my-attention-is-elsewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=3323","title":{"rendered":"My attention is elsewhere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know what&#8217;s frustrating? I think of these awesome topics while I&#8217;m doing things like driving the car, or giving Kate a bath, or laying in bed nursing her. Then, hours and\/or days later I open up my blog and I stare at the screen. I type two words and then the dog causes something to go crash, my husband comes home, or the baby wakes up, or I get an email from work, and now those two words make no sense to me at all anymore. And that idea? I had an idea? Wait, what? I used to be able to write. I used to write a lot. Now I&#8217;m just trying to make sure I keep up with my little notes in my text file and emails to my mom.<\/p>\n<p>And the phone? I admit, I&#8217;ve always had issues with phones. Always, from the time I was a little kid. I was most certainly not that youngling answering the phone when she shouldn&#8217;t be, I remember my mom practically yelling at me to get me to call people (to say thank you, or to ask a question, or whatever). The phone issues were getting better as I grew up these last 10 years. I still would avoid some calls that would set off my anxiety for unknown reasons, but I was pretty good about making appointments and such. Now? Ha. Well first of all, Kate was always either awake and needing to be held (and no, I do not multi-task well) or asleep on me and the sound of my voice would wake her up. Now she&#8217;s in the <i>If I see it it must be mine!<\/i> stage and I spend the entire phone call with my mom juggling Kate on one arm while she shrieks happily and reaches out for the phone. Sometimes I put her down to play, which she&#8217;s good at, but it never fails that the moment I try to hold a conversation on the phone she starts crying or shrieking or something. The time I get to myself to do things is from 10 until Midnight &#8211; no phone calls can be made during those hours. So now my phone anxiety is back up again and I beg for people to please text or email me.<\/p>\n<p>See, if though Kate&#8217;s asleep right now I still am all discombobulated trying to do three things at once. I wrote those two paragraphs and then flipped over to something else and now have lost my train of thought. No, wait&#8230; I didn&#8217;t have one to start with.<\/p>\n<p>::<\/p>\n<p>Since having Kate I joined a local moms group just for the socialization aspect, something to do during the day and people to get to know. It&#8217;s kind of funny, I think I&#8217;m more social now than I ever was before. I still would probably stay home most days, if it weren&#8217;t for little miss bright-eyes getting bored with that. Last night I took Kate with me to an evening gathering. She has a late bedtime so staying out until 10 isn&#8217;t a huge problem with us as it is with other families with babies. She does get a little clingy in the evening &#8211; much more mellow than her usual shrieking, bouncing self &#8211; but even so she let some of the other mommies hold her for a while. When she got whiny I took her and she layed her head on my shoulder&#8230; but still leaned back to watch everyone with serious eyes.<\/p>\n<p>The girls commented that I seem very relaxed for a first-time mom. I&#8217;m not sure what triggered the comment, as there was nothing of note that happened. Maybe me passing Kate around, maybe the way I repeatedly picked her paci off the floor to simply brush it off and pop it back in again, or maybe just the fact that I was there with her at 10pm instead of fretting about bed times. It&#8217;s not the first time someone has mentioned to me that I&#8217;m an easy-going mama. It actually makes me giggle a little. Me, easy-going. Not something I ever would have expected with my personality.<\/p>\n<p>The more I think about it the more I realize that I just don&#8217;t care about the small things. If she spits up on her clothes or puts toys in her mouth or leans forward and bonks her head on the wall&#8230; it&#8217;s all okay. I don&#8217;t judge my life&#8217;s success by a clean floor or how long she naps. I think that&#8217;s definitely a side-effect of the losses we&#8217;ve been through. Is Kate injured? No? We&#8217;re all good.<\/p>\n<p>On the flip side things like car safety are very important to me. I cannot for the life of me understand parents who don&#8217;t bother to correctly strap their child into a carseat. I probably make Kate a little uncomfortable with how snug I pull her straps every time, but she only fusses momentarily. She wears only light fleece jackets when in the seat. And I plan to keep her rear-facing until she is 3 or 4 years old. The idea of getting into an accident isn&#8217;t just a hazy maybe, it&#8217;s something that could very well happen tomorrow. I will do everything I possibly can to make sure that she is as safe as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know what&#8217;s frustrating? I think of these awesome topics while I&#8217;m doing things like driving the car, or giving Kate a bath, or laying in bed nursing her. Then, hours and\/or days later I open up my blog and I stare at the screen. I type two words and then the dog causes something [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3324,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3323\/revisions\/3324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}