Gratitude.

Merry Christmas Eve. 

Here I sit, snug in our home on Christmas  Eve, curled up on our tiny couch, with my sweet sleepy girl, & snoozing kitten. 

We are cooking Christmas Eve dinner at home this year. 

Goose just came out of the oven, 

potatoes are boiling, Christmas music is playing, presents are wrapped, tree is lit. 

The house is reasonably clean, we did nothing today but be at home & be a family & walk the dog in the woods. 

It's our first Christmas with our wonderful Iris. It's the first time I've ever eaten a goose. It's the first time we've ever just spent Christmas at home. It's so lovely to be here, & not on the road driving, or just finished driving, or about to drive. 

I'm just so grateful for this small sleeping girl. This is the best moment, Iris here in my arms by the Christmas tree on a crisp dark December night in Massachusetts.

These are the things that I try to hold on my heart & remember always. 

Merry Christmas, everyone! 

Night thoughts.

I'm currently lying in bed between my snoring husband & our not quite sleeping but drowsy nursing baby. Our determinedly sleep resisting baby. 

I feel like I've spent the last four hours trying to get Iris to sleep. 

Look how sleepy she is. 

I think I have. I have had almost no me time today. One of those days where Owen came home from work & Iris immediately began needing me & only me & so the evening went. 

I struggle in my heart at these times, because she's so wonderful & just when I'm getting the most annoyed at being stuck lying next to her in bed endlessly nursing, she's just so sweet & it's amazing really that she wants & needs me like this. 

It's wonderful, it's the most amazing thing I've ever done. Still sometimes I struggle with the patience to resist my desire to just go into the kitchen & drink some wine & listen to music & cook dinner the way I used to. 

Sigh. It was again one of those nights. Still trying out the early bedtime, so it was  just a long cycle of nurse for an hour, sleep for 20 minutes, wake up & scream, repeat. I wish her dad could console her, but he really can't. 

We had an excellent day until evening. Fun boob group, successful downtown trip to buy stamps at the post office, & duck pants & striped overalls for Iris at the Salvation Army,  & an overpriced hot chocolate at Greenfield Coffee for me. And a nice walk with the hound at home after. It was in the high 40s today, not bad for Western Mass in December. We got out of the house, we accomplished things, we hung out with cool mamas.

But I had high productivity hopes for the evening that sure didn't pan out. 

The positives: I took a lovely shower during Iris' first short nap. I started to cook dinner during her second. 

During the nursing her to sleep stretches I've been rereading "The Time Traveler's Wife", which is one of my very favorite books & why Iris was almost named Clare ( don't tell). 

I find it's difficult for me to read when I'm also tending to Iris, but I can reread my favorite books, they are like old friends. So rereading Time Traveler's Wife for the hundredth time is nice. 

I did make dinner, I made a turkey & Brussel sprouts curry from the endless pile of Thanksgiving leftovers, served over wild rice blend made with turkey stock & sour cream & sriracha.

Owen just ate leftover pizza from last nights' creative use of Thanksgiving leftovers,

but despite the baby related time constraints, I actually felt like cooking. I needed to. 

(Isn't this still a food blog?)

So by reading & cooking I got to feel like myself a tiny bit, I guess that's the moral of this story? 

And my sweet girl is now asleep & my husband is snoring loudly in my ear. 

Now Owen is talking in his sleep about beer prices. Iris seems totally out, except most likely not if I leave the bed. I am of course totally wide awake.

Hello world. 

What the hell do I do all day, anyway?

Classic question of the stay-at-home mom: what do you do all day? Six months in & I'm still not sure. Let's see. 

Today, Tuesday, December 6, 2013, a fairly typical stay at home day with my almost six month old girl. 

(Some days we get out & about, but at least a couple days a week we have no car & we stay home. Today was one of those days). 

6am-7am: wake up & nurse, go back to sleep. 

7am: repeat step one, dad leaves around 7:30. 

8am-9am: Iris actually sleeps, while I lay in bed next to her & wish I could go back to sleep, since she's sleeping, which is so very rare lately. But I can't, of course. 

9am: Iris wakes up. She nurses. We hang out snugging in bed for a while (one of my favorite times of the day-she's always in an awesome mood when she first wakes up). 

9:30am-10am: we get up.  Diaper change. I put Iris in her bassinet in the kitchen & I tend to the fire in the wood stove & make coffee & clean up the kitchen & do the previous night's dishes. I also really enjoy this part of the morning. 

10am-11am: we sit down with my coffee & Iris sits on my lap & has a snack. I look at Facebook. I read her some books. 

11am-11:30am: Iris starts to get cranky. We attempt to both get dressed. 

11:30am-12pm: Iris continues to be very cranky, & I attempt to nurse her to sleep. She briefly sleeps next to me. I get to read for a few minutes. 

12-12:30pm: Iris wakes up. We feed the dog & cat & chickens & take the dog outside for a short walk up the hill. 

12:30-1pm: we come back inside, & Iris nurses some more. We attempt tummy time, but Iris just rolls over immediately so I give up. 

1-1:30pm: Iris goes back in the bassinet in the kitchen & I tend to the wood stove again & clean some more & make myself a cheese & mayo & sriracha sandwich. 

1:30-2pm: I try to get Iris to hang out in her crib so I can do laundry. There is plenty of fussing, but I get the laundry into the machine somehow. I also manage to throw the chickens some bread leftover from Thanksgiving & do some random tidying up. 

2-3:30pm: we take the dog for a walk in the woods. It's lovely. It's a gorgeous day. 

3:30-4pm: we return the dog to the house, & go check the mail. Then we watch the chickens for a while, & take some pictures on my iPhone in the yard. 

4-4:30pm: we sit on the couch & nurse & listen to NPR.

4:30-5pm: I attempt to deal with the laundry some more. 

5-5:30pm: Iris by some miracle sits in her chair car thing & I address some holiday cards. 

5:30-6pm: dad comes home, because he is awesome he starts a pizza crust for dinner while I hold Iris & let her watch him. 

6-6:30pm: we hang our with dad. 

6:30-7pm: I feed the animals their dinner. Then I give Iris a bath, put on her jammies, & read her a book (the Olivia Christmas book). I nurse her to sleep.

7-7:30pm: Iris sleeps! I continue to work on holiday cards.

7:30-8pm: Iris wakes up. I go back to nursing her to sleep. Dad makes a pizza.

And now we come to the present. I am writing this while attempting to nurse Iris 

back to sleep. Fingers crossed that this works & dad & I can actually eat that pizza. 

Maybe as some big excitement we will watch some tv on the internet & I'll get to take a shower. 

Now: 

Others mamas reading this-what do your days look like? This is all so crazy to me, sometimes, our days together. How do I get so little done? How does the time pass so quickly & so slowly at the same time? Does anyone know?