One of the fascinating aspects of living with an infant that people rarely nail down is what an infant does to the time you have during a day.  Most people will tell you that infants require tons of time and tons of attention - believe it or not, this really isn’t true.  Always remember that, when dealing with infants, they behave very similarly to dogs; they’ll sleep through most of the day, being awake at various random parts to eat, poop, and occasionally snuggle.  That’s all an infant does.  In many ways, you can treat an infant similarly to a dog - if you feed it, talk to it, occasionally take it outside, and bathe it from time to time, you’re meeting its needs for the next few months.

There’s one hitch, though.

A seldom-discussed fact of infant life is that, strange as it might sound, they actually sleep more than adults.  A lot more.  Infants will actually sleep up to 14 hours each day.  What they won’t do, at least not for a few months, is actually do enough of that in a single block to be remotely useful for an adult sleep cycle.  This wrecks complete and total havoc on the sanity of the parents.

What this means, at least in my experience, is that you still have nearly as much time as you ever had to get things done, but a lot less energy to do them with.  Everything just kind of feels like you’re pushing through molasses, making everything take longer than it used to in order to get things done.  It’s not that the kid has really affected your time schedule much - he’s barely awake half the day, after all, and it’s not like children aren’t portable - he’s just completely nuked your ability to actually use your time with any efficiency.

This, coincidentally, is my cop-out on why my blog has suffered a minor meltdown.  The good news is that work has been increasingly quiet as of late, which tends to help my energy levels a little.  The bad news is that my ability to maintain a coherent thought worth writing about is directly proportional to the amount of sleep I’m able to get during the night, and, at this point, we’re in “How the hell am I not babbling random Broadway showtunes?” territory.  I’m not kidding.  During a work meeting tonight, I caught myself humming the Canadian National Anthem. No idea why.  Not sure what the point of it was, or what its relevance was.  My brain just decided it was time to hum it, so I did.  Thankfully, I did it quietly, so I doubt it was noticed, but, even so, it’s a little disconcerting.

Things on the list for the near future:

• I haven’t given up on the “Stuff Nerds Like” feature around here.  I have a few posts started, believe it or not.  The trouble is actually coming up with something interesting to say about them - I mean, you can only write, “Nerds really like X.  It helps them escape the cold, harsh nature of reality,” so many times before you feel you’re not only repeating yourself but not really providing anything useful to the conversation.  Yeah, I get it - Science Fiction, LARPing, etc. is all an attempt to escape reality.  So is Burning Man.  Surely, in the wild, twisted maze that is my brain at this point, is some insight that digs just a wee bit deeper than that.  I mean, if you need me to state the obvious, well, I can do that, but c’mon…
• At some point this week, I will find a way to check out some Hot August Nights action.  Then, I shall blog about it… but not here.  I shall blog about it there.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS