One Week To Go

This time next Wednesday, The Wife will be bringing NJ home from her first day of day care. We've been e-mailing the school about what we need to send to day care with her, gone over her current formula-to-whole-milk transition, and asked whether NJ will be at a disadvantage amongst her peers because she's not yet walking. We've been reassured on all fronts, and are looking forward to the center's picnic this Friday to meet all the teachers, parents and kids.

I've been working two jobs for 10 days now -- the job I started last Monday, and taking care of NJ. It hasn't been a picnic, by any means, but my new colleagues are understanding types and we're muddling through. From that one perspective, I'll be glad when day care starts. From every other perspective, though, I'm a bit wistful at the notion of, for the first time in more than a year, not spending the day with my girl. The Wife is a little wistful, too, because she prefers that her daughter be in the care of her husband over the care of people we don't know well. In particular, she's dreading that first day drop-off, when NJ will "think I'm abandoning her." And NJ is doing her best to make it tough on her parents by turning the smiling/laughing/personality-developing/fun-loving knob up to 11 lately. I'm looking forward to the day two weeks from now when our new routines will be set and this big change turns out to be fine, dandy and normal. We know it will end up being fine, dandy and normal, but I'll be happy to see it rather than just anticipate it.

Hey, why the long face? Get over here and lemme squeeze that nose of yours. And lighten the heck up, will ya? OK? Good. Now get me some more corn.

And much less importantly, I've got a week to come up with a new blog name and tag line.

Ch-Ch-Changes: Just Gonna Have To Be A Different Man

My new job starts in two days, the day after NJ turns one year old. (She was born at 10.45 p.m., so I will be starting the job less than 12 hours after her to-the-minute birthday.) It's a great gig: very interesting, right up my alley, and most of the time I'll be working from home. Even so, though, sadly -- and obviously -- I can't keep NJ around and perform employment-related tasks at the same time. She is quite the proverbial handful now, and even though she's seemingly maxing out on precocious (more on this later), there's clearly more of it headed our way in the near future.

Still, though, NJ's day care doesn't begin until Sept. 1. So, for two weeks and a couple of days -- against all odds and reason, and despite what I just said about how it can't be done -- I'll be juggling her and my new duties simultaneously. There's one day next week that I'll definitely have to leave her in someone else's capable hands, when I go to my employer's headquarters to get a pass key and have someone get me on their computer network. Otherwise, though, I'll be cramming a lot of work into the two stretches of time during the day when NJ takes her naps, sneaking in some more work while NJ tools around in her Pack-and-Play pen, and finishing up in the evening when she's in bed. My new work team members understand this situation and are cool with it. In fact, they are more sanguine about things than I am. I feel like Daniel Plainview:

I've abandoned my child! I've abandoned my child!

I've explained to NJ that I need to go back to work to put more food on her table and pay for things like birthday presents and day care. ("But if you stayed home with me you wouldn't have to pay for day care," she said via mental telepathy yesterday, leaving me hemming and hawing.) I'm really trying to convince myself, though. Despite rare, short-lived bouts of boredom with changing diapers and mixing formula, being home with her has been the best time of my life. And she's unbelievably charming and cute these days, so much so that listing the reasons why can make one sound like Michael Palin bragging about the Spanish Inquisition's attributes: NJ's two chief weapons are her chubby cheeks, her two front teeth and her sunny disposition. Three ... her three weapons are cheeks, teeth, disposition. And infectious giggle. Four! Her FOUR chief weapons of adorableness are cheeks, teeth, disposition, giggle, and her new go-to move, grabbing my nose. Amongst her weaponry are such elements as chubby cheeks, nose-grabbing ... wait, I'll come in again. It's not going to be easy.

So two life-changing days are right around the corner. Monday's the day I start the second job, one I'll be performing at the same time as my current gig, taking care of the kid, for a while; and Sept. 1 is the day someone else -- people I barely know! -- start taking care of NJ all day long. The first one will usher in a new, if short, era of confusion and hubbub to the household. The other day will be, to say the least, bittersweet.

Before those, though, comes the anniversary of the day that changed my life and The Wife's life forever, and for the better. So: Let's focus on that, shall we?

Five O'Clock and I'm Starting to Sag

By the time The Wife walked through the door yesterday, I was exhausted. As I sit here this morning, I’m trying to figure out why, exactly. It was a fairly typical day … simple errands, playing with NJ, stealing minutes for household chores and the like while she played with one of her bazillion Christmas toys or napped in the basement. When I got home from dropping a lithograph off at the frame shop and exchanging a baby shirt, NJ was sawing logs in the car seat. I left her in it to snooze while I ate lunch, and this ended up being her afternoon nap. It was too early, and by 3 p.m. or so she was tired, cranky, and not going to sleep. Finally I gave her two ounces of formula and she dropped off in my lap, at 5 p.m. When The Wife got home I was delighted to hand NJ off to her, even if it meant eating leftovers for dinner because I didn’t feel like cooking and The Wife couldn’t cook unless I took NJ back. Which wasn’t going to happen. So I laid on the sofa for a solid hour watching TV and goofing around on my iPhone.

So: Why so beat? Nothing out of the ordinary going on, really. Did the cranky, tired baby make me cranky and tired? Osmosis? Is full-time infant parenting really this tiring? There was a tense moment late in the afternoon when I was holding NJ up to look out the window—a sure-fire calming trick, usually, but not when her socks slip on the sill and she bumps her forehead on the window. I watched the slow build-up to a full-throated cry and thought, “Brace yourself,” but she got over it very quickly and by the time we’d rocked out to “Vertigo” in the kitchen it was forgotten.

Part of it is that I’m thinking I have to be On all the time. Which I do, at least until some natural rhythms develop and take root. At various times of the day I looked at the clock and thought either “Holy cow, it’s already so late” or “Are those hands moving backward?” Like I said to a friend once under different circumstances: "Wow, that (looks at watch) certainly was an amount of time, wasn’t it?"

Another factor is taking stock at the end of the day. At my job I could drive home and think "OK, I edited three articles, built five Web pages and created a bunch of search keywords today. Nice job." The accomplishments now are a hell of a lot better -- NJ's smiles and laughs, a giant burp after a meal (her, not me), an angelic face as she naps -- but a little harder (or just weirder) to neatly catalog. I'm going to make more of an effort to notice these things, to see them in real time, to drink them in. They're the reason I'm here.