A long work day

River got my cold, so I failed at the prevention. The upside is that now I can kiss him freely. Luckily, his seems to be milder than mine, so hopefully he won’t suffer too much.

Since we’re going to need our sitter for more hours during the time when I’m gone, I’m trying to cut back the hours before I leave to prevent us from going broke. So today I watched River all day, with the exception of my husband covering 45 minutes in the evening.

It helped that today was a beautiful day and I was able to get my 11,500 steps by taking a morning and an afternoon walk with him. At 2 p.m. Mark called and asked how I was doing.

“Fine,” I said. “River is napping and it’s really not too bad.” We’d had fun together in the morning, I got exercise during the walk, and he napped over two hours, allowing me to enjoy a cup of tea and to get some work done. Even while he was awake I could do things that didn’t require too much concentration. I baked apples, I uploaded photos to his Totspot page, I responded to emails. Thoughts of getting by with less babysitting began to run through my head. Maybe I could manage to work just during his naps and in the evenings?

Then around four it hit me. I was tired. I’d been on duty almost nine hours already. And I still had four more to go before he was asleep. I was also dodging phone calls, needing to speak to several people about professional matters, but not wanting a baby to be heard in the background. I did what I could during his nap. Then I neglected to answer the phone, waiting until Mark got home and gave me 45 minutes to work in quiet. Even if River was fun and well-behaved and infinitely huggable, this was longer than any paid work day. I was correspondingly worn out.

Yes, I do enjoy spending time with him and long days are getting easier as he gets older. But I’m definitely still a happier, more balanced and more accomplished person if I have a portion of the day blocked off to myself.