The Seversons

Graham knows what he wants, he just isn’t always sure how to do it.  I know how he feels.  The last several weeks have been full of errands and things to do, but I don’t always have the ability to get them done the way I’d like to.

Happily, I’ve finally mastered the very fast open-and-close of the stroller.  And Grammer has good enough head control that now I can leave the car seat in the car and load him in there, instead of carrying the entire massive thing up the stairs from our apartment every single time we go anywhere.  So we can get moving pretty quickly.  But that’s not really the limiting factor.

Graham’s morning naps are long-ish and tend to come one after the other.  For example, this morning he was up at 6, had a change and a bottle, went back to sleep, up at 8:30, had a change and a bottle and played for a while, went back to sleep, up at 10:30, had a change and a bottle and played for an hour, and is now asleep again a little past noon.  This is how most mornings go, though the times may change.  It is impossible to get anything done before noon.

Once we’ve reached the afternoon, our windows of opportunity are quite small.  We shouldn’t go until at least 30 minutes after Graham’s eaten so that we avoid excessive amounts of spit-up while we’re out.  And he’ll only be up for about 2 hours before he’ll get very cranky and need to go back to sleep or need another bottle.  This limits us to one–maybe two–errands per day.  If I try to make another round after he’s had a nap it never goes well.  He can only stand so much of the car seat in one day.  (Which bodes very well for future long car rides!)

Yesterday I had a flat (thankfully, the baby wasn’t with me, he would’ve loved sitting around and waiting for an hour) and once the spare was on I knew I should head straight over to get the tire fixed or replaced.  But I couldn’t resist making a quick stop at the library first.  Because otherwise I may never get a chance to go.  And if I tried after we’d been at the tire place for an hour, I was guaranteed some non-library-worthy behavior.

Today the list of stuff I have to do is long, and it’s getting longer by the day as we are getting close to Eric’s exams and the holidays.  The homemade Christmas presents some of you will be receiving are not yet started and it’s very possible you won’t get them until 2010.  Sorry in advance.  I will also be sending my baby-gift-thank-you-notes with them and hope that the little presents will atone for my tardiness.

Things would be a little easier if we had weekends.  We don’t.  Not that Saturdays and Sundays don’t exist, but with interviews over and exams looming, Eric is gone every day studying.  It is bad enough that while he did take the day off for my birthday, we spent most of the day at the mall scoping out his birthday/x-mas present because I so wanted it done with and couldn’t do it without him there.  So yes, for my birthday Eric got a very large present.  (Ironically, my birthday present was not in stock.  It will be here soon.  Maybe.)  To be fair we did have a pretty fabulous dinner that night.

(If you feel that the story of my birthday is just unacceptable, you are always free to buy me a present from my amazon wish list.)

As for Graham, things are much better now that he can amuse himself, but there’s always something new for him to master.  He recently started rice cereal and he seems to have a love/hate relationship with it.  He so desperately wants the spoon with cereal on it and in his mouth.  But when it gets there he doesn’t know what to do with it.  Yesterday he seemed to have the idea for a few bites, but then it all went downhill.  We’ll see if he improves.

This afternoon we will attempt to get supplies for dinner, pick up several prescription refills, make a phone call to change a hotel reservation, and hopefully call the dentist if I actually remember to do it.  Without a baby it would be a breeze, but with him it’s a bit of a tall order.  And it’s a bit chilly out today, otherwise we’d pack him in the running stroller and walk over to the grocery store.  He enjoys that a lot, even when it’s cold.  The problem is he doesn’t like being warm inside the store after our chilly walk.  I share his pain, I always find myself taking off my coat when I’m inside, but we don’t have the freedom to be regularly dressing and undressing him yet.

And now I will have to give up the blog post because he’s waking up from his nap.  Thus is life.