Mama

Finally.  Coming in long behind words Da, Dog, and Duck, “Mama” has made an appearance on my son’s lips.  And we know he means me because when Dave told me that he had heard Conor say it, Conor perked up, smiled and said Mamama (one syllable too much, but who’s counting?) and crawled as quickly as he could over to me. 

About damn time, baby.  Now let’s work on consistently going to sleep at the end of our bedtime routine and we’ll count your development as DONE! for the moment.  (Do you really want to hear me blog about how his signs are picking up and he has just started over the last week occasionally making the signs for please, eat, all done, cat and monkey?  Or that he’s finally making the “real” more sign as opposed to just clapping?  No? I didn’t think so.  He’s still only walking if we’re holding his hand.  The child can walk.  I know he can.  He’s just very risk averse to falling down (he gets his risk aversions naturally from his mamama) so he’s going to wait until he’s quite sure of himself before he starts walking on his own.  Fine.  Just start regularly going to SLEEP when we put you to bed and we’ll stop complaining.)

Home Office

I want to again express my love, love, LOVE working in my home office.  It makes such a huge difference having a dedicated space separate from the house to work in.  We’ve added more furniture and décor and I have to post some pix soon, but boy oh boy it makes a difference in my productivity to have this distinct, separate place to work at home.  I actually worked on a paper from 10 until 1:30 this week not even breaking to go to the bathroom or to eat.  I haven’t had that sort of flow in quite a while.  I think being here in this exact spot helps. 

Home Clean

You know, one of the bad things about being an old fart when one gets married and has children is that one has been pretty used to having a lot of freedom in the past of deciding when to work, when to play and when to clean.  By not being accountable to anyone else, I could work late at the office and catch up on my tasks.  I could cook and eat when I was hungry.  And if I left the dishes in the sink overnight, I’d have plenty of time the next morning to clean them. 

Not so much with a family. 

The choices appear to be: carefree, easy living in a pig pen of a house and guilt of work hanging over our head OR focused task performance without fear of DSS stopping by to rescue our son from his slovenly parents or fear of losing our jobs.  It’s not as much fun, but for the last two days, we’ve woken up to a clean kitchen and toy area.  And that didn’t suck. 

Off to conquer today’s tasks. 

9:13:41 AM