Growing Up Savvy Posts

They used to be my SSBs (Secret Single Behaviors)… the types of things I liked to do on my own at leisure. These included reading magazines on a weekend morning in a wooden chair with my feet propped up on a neighboring chair over a bottomless cup of coffee. I am sure you have your own SSBs and like me, you don’t like to share them with anyone.

Over the last five years, my SSBs slowly became OUR SSBs and thus family rituals and we’ve gladly welcomed little Sophia into our secret (not so anymore) life. The latest ritual is cartoon time on weekend mornings. Sophia takes a bottle at 5-6am and if we’re very lucky, snoozes for an hour or so. Since we have nowhere to run on the weekends, we let her snooze with us in bed and when she wakes up, we turn on the PBS and she watches it for 15-30 minutes. Precious time for hubby and I to catch up on the news (via phone, iPad, whatever) and ease into the weekend.

You are probably thinking that I must have given up all matter of me-time, but not so. My last hold-out SSB is to take one day a year for me. I usually make that in early April, on my birthday when the weather is still crisp but the air smells of the coming spring. I wake up early in the morning, get ready and head out as if I were heading to work. Instead of heading into the office, I head into the city, settle into a coffee shop in a tony part of town and linger over a coffee or two watching people run to and fro. A trip to a museum and perhaps a lunch complete the SSB. I return home, refreshed, rejuvenated and ready for a more social environment.

Now that we’ve established that everyone has SSBs, what are yours?

We’re back from our self imposed pause in blogging. The reasons for the break in the depictions of the trials and tribulations of our family life are threefold. Firstly, there was our pause to take a break and think about the tragedy in Connecticut. Then, Sophia caught a very bad cold that brought our daily normalcy and rhythms to a halt. Then … just as Sophia was on the upswing, having shared her plague with us, we were setting off on a vacation with the hubby’s family.

Before I talk about my newfound admiration for people traveling with young children, I’d like to share a quiet wish; this year, I wish not to see and feel unimaginable sadness that is brought by unjust treatment of those who are unable to defend themselves. And in case anyone’s listening upstairs :-), I’d like to win the lottery and travel around the world, too.

If you’re a reader of this blog, you will find that it has no specific purpose other than to share and document a life of a young family through all our trials and tribulations. However, there are those days when even though there is plenty to share, none of it matters. Today, we pause to allow everyone to take an introspective look assessing what is important to them and what real joy and real sadness are.

A few days ago, I would have said that real joy is listening to Sophia say “Come-ear oney” (Come here, honey) and real sadness was that she was and is still very sick with a terrible cold. But truthfully, real joy is coming home and hugging your child and real sadness is suddenly loosing that joy for the rest of your life.

Until recently, well… before Sophia, I felt young and that my whole life was in front of me. I could go anywhere, do anything, go out on on the town with friends with almost not notice, take a last minute vacation. I relished that freedom.

I realize that I can no longer go out on or take a last minute vacation what with having to pack all those diapers and baby food, but I still mostly thought I was young. I now realize that I am on the decline. It used to be that I could drink many a cup of coffee right before bed, go to bed, fall asleep and wake up rested and refreshed. Then, I had Sophia and I dreamed of just going to be and having her sleep a solid 4 hours. Now, I have insomnia! When she doesn’t sleep, I am miserable. When she does sleep, I cannot fall asleep and I don’t even drink coffee in the evening anymore.