Time Management

Little baby Bridgette is now nearly 5 weeks old. It really does go so fast!

Yes, it’s a 4 weeks photo, 5 weeks is still in progress.

Granted, it probably also went fast because my life has recently become a blur of days. Day and night no longer matter. Time is abstract. All that matters is the cry of the wild Bridgette, her little pleas indicating any number of a huge range of things that could be wrong. She could be hungry or have a dirty diaper (the most obvious), or it could be any number of other things. She might be hot, she might be cold, she might be tired, she might smell something weird, or she might hate the color blue. We’ve dubbed her as “Sad Baby.” She definitely has a nomination for the saddest baby of 2019, possibly ever. 

She’s a shoe-in to win the category!

Due to the level of monitoring that Sad Baby requires, it feels like I haven’t done nearly as much as I thought I’d get done. I’m on maternity leave, and that seemed like a great opportunity to get some things done. I could go to the gym, do housework, work on the barn, resurface the arena…. and the most I’ve accomplished is that I went to the gym. One time. Yesterday, my biggest accomplishment is that I got the baby to sleep – at 9 pm after she had been awake since noon. I had been trying to get her to sleep since 3 pm. I had no idea that babies would get so tired that they would refuse to sleep. Where is the logic in that? Dang illogical babies. If you’re tired, sleep! This isn’t rocket science. Yet for whatever reason, she just cries instead of sleeping. Screaming at me how tired she is, yet refusing to actually sleep. My favorite part is when she decides her normal level of crying isn’t getting the reaction she wants, so she kicks it up a notch and finds a higher, shriller level of crying. 

Of course, as I write this, she is currently angel baby, sleeping peacefully, after a full nights rest. (Once she actually went to sleep, she was out nearly all night.) Which is why I’m able to write this, instead of desperately trying to figure out what would make her content. (Content is a keyword – she’s not happy with anything, but she’ll decide that my feeble attempts to make her happy are somewhat satisfactory, enough to stop crying, but still have an annoyed expression on her face.)

Sweet angel baby!

Having a few minutes to myself now seems like a fantasy. But, if this fantasy existed, here are some things I’d do:

1. Go for a ride. I’m not even going to be greedy and say regularly. Literally, one ride would be good for now. Unfortunately, my arena has been neglected the entire time I’ve been pregnant, so I have a bit of a chore to get it ready for rides. I’ll need to drag it, which means I need to fix the tractor wheel (oh yeah, the tractor wheel has been messed up for months now. I was pregnant, I have an excuse I didn’t fix it.) So these two chores stand in the way of me riding here, and if I trailer out… well, since I haven’t done it in so long, that also seems like a chore. Good news is that Berry was loading in the trailer, I was able to keep working on that even though I was pregnant. Now I just need to work on getting the courage to leave my baby for that many hours. 
2. Give the horses a good bath. They are still wooly from the winter. I still groom Stu because he clearly likes it so much, and he’s so appreciative, but the others are looking pretty rough. Granted, they might be happy that way, as Berry hates being groomed, Vintage is indifferent, and Pony imagines himself as a wild pony, living with a herd of mares on some mountain, but it’d still be nice for them to look presentable. I still need to get their shots done, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be judged by the vet if they keep looking the way they are. Minus Stu, my beautiful golden child. 
3. Go to the gym on a regular basis. I like the gym, and I am feeling weak without going. I gained a crazy (to me) amount of weight from being pregnant, and I want it gone. Granted, I did lose 7 lbs 7 ounces immediately after birth (ha ha, that’s a bad baby joke), but I’d like the rest to leave. I gained about 40 lbs total, and although it’s not the worst thing in the world, I’d like to be able to fit into my non-maternity clothes again. Unrelated to the weight loss, I did get a Belle-fit “medical” corset, and that actually did help with shrinking my uterus – or at least that area sticks out less.
4. Blog and Instagram more. I really miss blogging. I know I’ve been super inconsistent about getting posts written. I’ve even written out a few that I never published, and now they are out of date and irrelevant. I haven’t taken many photos recently, and therefore have a limited supply for Instagram. Granted, I actually have taken a ton of photos recently, but they are all of Bridgette. I’m not sure how many people want to see my daughter in her various stages of lying about. Although to be honest, I’d totally post all of them if I had an equal number of horse photos to balance it out. But… see 2 above. The horses look like small, messy, wooly mammoths. With the exception of glorious Stu. So I guess I could post pictures of my two babies, Bridgette and Stu.  

On the positive side, my house is basically clean all the time now. There’s nothing like being trapped in your house to realize how much you actually hate your house, or at least the items in it. I’ve been decluttering and cleaning in my spare time. We are planning a renovation that would open up our space and give us a new kitchen, but we still haven’t pulled the trigger in getting it scheduled. But as I’ve made space for the contractor to get started, I’ve realized how much stuff we have that we don’t need. I feel like I need to embrace a minimalist lifestyle and the lovely cleanliness that provides. 

I’ve still only left my house a few times, but it’s baby steps in the right direction. I have a few outings planned to reintroduce me to the outside world – It’s very much like taking a green horse out to acclimatize. It’s scary, but each time gets easier, and the chance of someone getting kicked decreases.