I feel like part of my identity has been taken over by my offspring Piper. I think it's pretty common--on Facebook many women with children have children with them in their profile pictures, which I think is indicative of how it affects a caregiver on an almost subconscious level. I am down to one breastfeeding a day, and I'm kind of looking forward to being more separate from Piper. It feels like she will always be clinging to me and wanting something of me.
I thought I might be one of those moms who wants to breastfeed their baby for a long time and hold them all the time, but I'm not. I think I might be a bit opposite that, actually. I might have mentioned this before but I feel like I'm trying to optimize my parenting to not include effort from me. I like Piper just fine! I just have other things I want to do. Sometimes I feel like I'm not savoring the baby moments enough, like I'm going to miss her being a baby or something, but I think that will be nostalgia and not actually wanting to go back in time. Although right now I am remembering how much time I had to myself when she was sleeping half the day!
The main thing I do that is not related to childcare and housekeeping is to consume media like books, TV, and videogames. My life is pretty good, so I don't feel like I NEED to "escape" it, although sometimes I feel like I'm trying to forget about my daily responsibilities for a few minutes (and is that so wrong?). I also like feeling like I'm a part of a common experience with popular media and sometimes it gives me something to talk about with other people. I know that if I spent more time on creative pursuits like writing or even doodling I would probably be happier about how I spend my leisure time! I guess that's why I'm writing this blog post.
We are getting Google fiber internet today! We had Utah Broadband (UBB) for about 3 months until we could get fiber installed. UBB had great customer service and they were able to install their antennae on our house pretty quickly. We got their lowest tier which is $40 a month and sort of okay. With the faster internet we won't have to think ahead of time for game downloads and I'll be able to stream TV in higher quality.
Last week my family on my dad's side had a family reunion. Adam took the week off and we tried to hang out at the Timp lodge where we had the reunion as much as possible. I enjoyed seeing my relatives and getting to know them a bit better. I have to admit though, it wasn't exactly a relaxing vacation. Lots of people helped with Piper pretty much constantly, and the rest of the family took care of the majority of meals. So I'm not really sure why it was stressful? Besides the fact that we ended up keeping Piper up late every night and she missed some of her naps. I keep telling myself that my "time off" is more like the time that everyone is on-schedule or at work and my "crunch time" is when we're on vacation or when we have company, but it still always surprises me how not relaxing it is to simply have people over (but I enjoy having people over!).
