Our Little Life

I haven’t written in a minute, but it’s been a pretty busy summer. Truth be told, I just don’t like to be busy right now. Being busy always requires a lot of prep work up front and a lot of catch-u​p work later. Preparing for a trip means finding a dog sitter (stress!), getting the dog to the dog sitter (more stress!), packing (with a toddler, this often can’t be done until the day-of, when he’s grabbing my legs and screaming), often quite a bit of cooking if I’m bringing toddler food and/or don’t want to return to a freezer empty of toddler food, and cleaning so we don’t return home to an environment of absolute chaos. Then when we get home there’s picking the dog up, unpacking (urgent with a toddler), grocery shopping (urgent with a toddler), laundry (urgent with a toddler) and somehow the house ends up a mess again. Even if it’s a really nice trip, in this particular season in my life I’d just rather stay home.

For the moment, with no big plans on the immediate horizon, we’ve settled into a really nice stillness and it has me wishing I could freeze time. We take lots of little walks, to the park, the grocery store, the bakery. The child plays in the rock park, picking up pine needles and sticks and garbage. He climbs up onto the little platform and can’t get down, so I help him down, and he immediately climbs back up. We do that over and over until I get tired of the whole thing, and we go back home. He points to his animal puzzle to make me say pig and horse and duck. He doesn’t say them yet himself, or anything at all besides mama and dada, but he’s made a game of making me say them. When I pick him up he pokes my chin and nose and hair and eye, playing the same game.

He naps around noon, usually for two to three hours. When his nap starts I spend thirty minutes on a chore – folding laundry, cleaning a bathroom, pulling weeds, whatever needs to be done the most. After thirty minutes, the time is mine to spend writing or reading. It would be all-too-easy to spend the entire nap trying to keep my house spotless, but I’m opting out of the treadmill of constant housework. There is no “done,” no matter how much time you spend. The easiest way to keep a house clean is to have a small house and not fill it with too much stuff. The fastest way to mop a floor is to dim the lights.

One weekday, instead of the usual 30 minutes of cleaning and then rest time, is what I’ve come to think of as BIG COOK DAY. It’s not really that big, but it usually takes up most of the nap. I do it twice a week, often Wednesdays and Saturdays, and it gets me vegetables for the baby and I to eat for a few days and one entree to restock the freezer with. With a show on my ipad, it’s almost fun. BIG COOK DAY means the freezer stays full and I hopefully never again have to do BIG COOK WEEK. BIG COOK WEEK is to be avoided at all costs.

From yesterday: sweet potatoes, carrots, delicata squash, cinnamon steamed apples and Italian white bean and kale bars, all for the child. Usually there would be broccoli and a few baked potatoes for me, but this time I didn’t need them.

We do a bit more on the weekends. We might venture out to the aquarium or even the zoo. We often visit one of our neighborhood’s breweries, and we might take the child to a park slightly farther away rather than one of the three we can walk to. We might take the bikes to the lake. This weekend we’re taking the ferry across the water just to hear the child laugh when the wind off the water hits his face. We plan to eat pizza on the other side before coming straight back, and then it’ll be bedtime for the little guy (and maybe us). But for the most part, we’re staying pretty close to home. We’re not driving all over the city. We’re not seeking out “toddler activities.” Rocks are free, and our neighborhood has a lot of rocks.

I know there are hard days coming, and if I let it, that scares the shit out of me. Right now it isn’t hard, and I wish I could somehow keep it that way. But since I can’t, I’m trying to stretch every second as long as I can – every leg hug, every giggle fit, every eye jab, every “goat” and “cow” and “pig.” I’m grateful for these small, still days.