A couple of weeks ago, when my mom was visiting, Sona and I had our first date night since Finn was born. We’d gone nearly 2.5 months without having an evening to ourselves–without ever leaving our son.

Needless to say, it was time.

Not only was date night an excuse to spend quality time together, doing something other than changing diapers, but it was also a reason to actually wash our hair, put on a little make-up, and make more than the minimal effort to look, well, approachable and mildly socialized.

Everyone warned that we’d spend the whole night talking–and fretting–about Finn, but we have a dirty little secret: we didn’t. I mean, he came up a couple of times, sure, but we spent most of the dinner talking about non-baby things just like we would have BF (Before Finn). It was the best time I’ve had with Sona in a long, long while. It felt special in a way that our pre-baby date nights hadn’t. Maybe that was because we needed it so badly. Maybe that was because we recognized what a rarity dates nights will be, now. Maybe that was because Sona had her first drink of alcohol in nearly a year.

Either way, we had a fabulous time.

But things haven’t been completely fabulous in the relationship department lately, if we’re being honest. And that’s the whole point of this blog thing, right? Honestly. Or something like it. I know that, when reading other blogs, the ones I feel the most connected to are the ones were the writers–the humans behind the screen–admit their flaws and own up to their imperfections. I’ve thought a lot about this, lately–about resisting the urge to create a perfectly curated life for the internets. About authenticity.

And the other evening, while Sona and I were on date night #2, we had to acknowledge something: the image we craft online–via this blog and our various social media accounts–isn’t always completely truthful. It’s not that we’ve actively tried to lie about our lives, it’s just that the Instagram version of our family isn’t always fully representative of who we are.

So, here’s the truth: tending to a marriage after a baby is difficult, and we’ve been struggling a bit.

BF I worried a lot about how the dynamic between Sona and I would change. I’ve written a bit about that, before. I worried that I’d be jealous of how much attention–and love–she gave him. (I’m ashamed to admit that, but it is the truth.) I worried that we’d interact with each other differently after the baby. I worried that our home wouldn’t be the sacred space it’d always been for the two of us.

All of those concerns were for naught. None of that happened, luckily. Finn became a part of our family so easily and so completely.

But here’s what I should have worried about: time. There just isn’t enough of it–not nearly. Most days, it’s everything we can do just to keep up with our professional responsibilities, keep our home in some kind of working order, and take care of Finn. Even then, things fall through the cracks pretty regularly.

In an attempt to balance those things, we’ve forgotten about our relationship. It wasn’t deliberate, but our marriage just hasn’t been a priority. How could it be?! We barely get the dishes done, the emails written, the baby bathed… well, you get the idea.

We’ve focused so much on keeping everything else together; we’ve forgotten that we have to keep ourselves together. It’s a trap a lot of new parents fall into, I’m sure. Our therapist has warned us about how many marriages end within the first two years of having a baby, and it’s not hard to see why.

Time, of course, is the biggest culprit. There just isn’t any of it. Now that Sona has returned to working full-time, getting up at 4:30 every morning, the evenings are a non-stop sprint to get things done. She gets home, exhausted, and immediately has to pump. We have to clean bottles. Make bottles. Make dinner. Clean up from dinner. Take care of random household chores. Oh, and did I mention that there’s a baby that requires a bit of attention? Weekday evenings are tough and, when we’re lucky, Finn goes to sleep about 5 minutes before Sona falls asleep. Alone time? Pfffffffft. What’s that?!

I can’t remember the last time we got a chance to cuddle on the couch–or in bed–without a baby. Or without being so tired that we both had drool pooling on the pillow before the lights were even out.

And exhaustion is another culprit. I’m lucky enough to get a good bit of sleep, as Finn is still sleeping 10-12 hours each night. Sona isn’t so lucky, though. She’s experiencing what we’ll both be experiencing come next semester: you go to work during the day, and then you come home to work at night.

And even if I feel well-rested, I’m usually pretty stressed out. I’m still trying to figure out how to do it all: the teaching career, the photography business, the blog (which is, right now, the only creative outlet that’s just for me), the baby. THE WIFE.

Between the exhaustion and the stress, Sona and I aren’t always giving each other the best side of ourselves. In fact, we’re usually giving each other the worst. We tend to everything around us–neurotically and obsessively–and then we save the leftovers for our marriage.

Lately, there hasn’t been much left over.

There’s other stuff, too. Like the fact that having a baby–and thinking hard about how you want to raise that baby–forces you to put every aspect of your lives under a microscope. I’ve been thinking harder about the things I want for Finn–and the things I don’t want for Finn. And I know Sona has, too.

Sometimes, the things we can tolerate for ourselves, we can’t tolerate for our children. And so, there have been lots of conversations about re-prioritizing. De-cluttering. Re-focusing our lives.

All of this amid the new parent identity crisis that rivals tween-hood.

So, we need to do better. We’re starting by making date night a regular thing. We’ve found a sitter we like, and we’ve already got several dates on the calendar–we’re aiming for twice a month!

But we need to do better in between date nights, too. I’m not sure where we should start, but we’ll get there. We’ll get more used to our new routine. Finn’s bedtime will start to scale back. Maybe (hopefully) we’ll get more comfortable with there being dishes in the sink and laundry piled in baskets.

Finn deserves to have two happy, loving mommies, but he can’t have that unless his mommies are happy, loving wives. We’re going to work on being better at that. We owe it to ourselves–not just to Finn.

(And, of course, I never would have written this without my wife’s permission. “I’m going to blog about our relationship,” is probably the most terrifying thing you can hear.) 😉

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a… gumball machine?

As it turns out, my first Pinterest-inspired costume-making adventure went off without much of a hitch. Lucky enough, Finn’s first costume required little more than a hot glue gun to construct. So, I felt up to the challenge.

We looked at tons of pre-made infant costumes, but nothing really spoke to us. There’s just not that much variety for a little squish that can’t even sit up, yet. So, rather than spend $50 for Finn to be a sadly misshapen lump of a zebra, we decided to go with something a little easier–and a little more fun.

As soon as I saw this gumball machine costume online, I was sold! It’s basically just a onesie, some pants, and a hat with pompoms glued on, after all. How could I mess it up? Plus, FOOD.

Of course, Finn is still a little too young to go trick-or-treating (can’t wait for the next year, though). This whole costume thing was really only for one purpose, then: photos. We wanted pictures of our little guy in his little costume, and we wanted to be able to say that–even if it served absolutely no purpose at all–we dressed him up for his first Halloween.

And since the only thing we really good do was take photos, we took A LOT of photos.

Having these photos–and being able to torture/embarass Finn with them when he’s older–is TOTALLY worth a few glue gun burns.

We had a great first Halloween with our little guy. We have a tradition of watching scary movies and binge-eating junk food with a couple of good friends. Finn stayed up with us, this year, and I was a little nervous that we’d have trouble getting through the movies while watching him.

Our little guy was a champ, though! He sat on the couch and hung out with us while we watched movies, and he even went to bed without a peep, all while we were loudly watching Insidious 3 and a party raged upstairs.

All month, I’ve been eyeing our neighborhood’s Facebook page, taking note of all of the Halloween activities offered for kids. Next year, Finn will be able to participate in some of them, and I’m SO excited about it. But I’m not going to wish time away–the trick or treating days will be here soon enough.

My mom was in town last week, as I mentioned a couple posts back. Finn had a great time with his Mimi, and I was thankful to have another adult around during the week.

My mom has always taken the tough love approach. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when, one afternoon, while we were out running errands, she looked right at me (mildy disgusted) and asked, “Do you even brush your hair?!”

Later, I recounted the conversation on Facebook and made some quip about how I needed to return to my pre-baby beauty routine. The truth is, since Finn was born, I haven’t paid much attention to my appearance.

(We deliberately took these photos on one of the few days when we DID brush our hair. Just because we wanted Finn to know, when he looks back on his baby pictures, that his mommas weren’t completely haggard.)

I don’t really brush my hair most days, actually. I mean, I comb it when I get out of the shower, but my blow dryer has been seriously neglected ever since Finn came into our lives. And let’s not even talk about make-up. Or any outfit that doesn’t involve Birkenstocks and flannel shirts. (Insert lesbian jokes, here.)

You get the idea.

Partly, this is because Finn and I don’t really do much. We run errands here and there, sure, but we don’t actually go anywhere that warrants my trading in the flannel for something even remotely more stylish. (Can I get a “what, what!” for flannel shirt weather?!)

And partly, this is because, when I’m home with him by myself, it is damn near impossible to get much done. My whole day has become a maze of naps and feeding times. That sounds like a complaint, but it isn’t. It’s just the reality. Finn’s life works on 2-3 hour cycles. He eats, poops, plays, sleeps, and does it all again.

I tackle my daily routine (eating, showering, answering work emails, doing house stuff) with my never-ending to-do list–all while he takes naps. And most of his naps last 45-55 minutes. And I usually only get 2 or 3 of those before Sona gets home.

When I have a big task for the day, like cleaning the house or editing photos or grading student essays, I literally rush to start as soon as he’s in his crib. Then, it’s just a race against the clock–or the baby monitor. Sometimes, like this week (with a wedding to shoot, an engagement session, a blown-out car tire, a dishwasher that died, a Halloween costume to finish–or start), it feels like all I do is rush around non-stop. And it can be exhausting.

I now understand all of those cliched movie plots wherein an overworked mom wants for nothing more than a long, peaceful bubble bath and a glass of wine.

I’ve tried carving out “me time,” when I can. I used to get manicures ones every few months, and now I get them pretty regularly. It’s silly, I know, especially since I have perfectly manicured fingernails and a tangled mess of a head. But it’s been nice to have that hour–every couple of weeks–not to have to even think about getting anything done.

Yesterday, I scheduled an early-morning conference call with an editor for a textbook I’ve co-authored. I deliberately asked everyone to chat early, thinking that Finn would still be sleeping. Of course, halfway through the call, he started squirming.

“I’m sorry,” I told our Oxford editor. “My son is crying and I have to go get him.”

I spent the last half of the conference call, discussing book edits while bottle-feeding–and burping–Finn. I did my best to seem interested in the phone conversation.

Maybe that’s the part of this parenting thing that’s been the toughest to work out–for me and for Sona. (She’s struggling with the never-ending to-do list in her head, too.) The thing is, we just can’t do it all. We could barely do it all before our son was born, and we’re failing miserably, trying to do it all, now.

It’s about finding balance–that thing that we’re all always trying to find. We haven’t found it, yet, if I’m being honest. I think there’s probably a learning curve for new parents, and I’m sure that some semblance of balance will come with time.

Until then, even though we sometimes feel like we’re spinning out of control, we wouldn’t trade in a second of the chaos for time we’ve gotten to spend with Finn. And that’s what I want to work on the most.

Not on having a cleaner house. Not on whittling down the to-do lists, though they are always there, nagging. Just on spending time with our son. CHOOSING Finn.

I haven’t been brushing my hair because I’ve been choosing to spend as much time as possible with our son. When he is awake, and while I’m home with him for what–in the long run–amounts to such a short and precious time, I choose him.

He is my priority–and that’s a lot coming from a gal who is a perfection-obsessed workaholic.

But I want Finn to look back on his childhood and remember that, even if there were dirty dishes in the sink and baskets of unfolded laundry all over the house, we always made time for him. We put him first, above everything else (except maybe Momma’s manicures).

We have to keep reminding ourselves, as parents, that most of the things we spend time worrying about don’t really matter at all. The best thing Sona and I have to give is our time, and how we choose to spend it is, after all, a CHOICE.

I choose Finn. And I’ll choose him again and again and again, without any regrets.

 

 

(getting this one in jusssssst under the wire)

And just like that, another month has passed! Somehow, we are parents to an 8-week old baby. How did that happen?!

Seeing Finn every single day, it’s harder to notice the little changes in his appearance. Yet, when I compare this month’s photo to last month’s photo, I just can’t believe how much he’s changed. He looks like a baby, now, and not a newborn.

His whole body is chunkier, and his face is fuller. Even though he’s still taller than he is plump, he is developing some (oh my god precious) rolls in his thighs. (Mom is happy about this, as he has fewer diaper leaks now that his legs fill out the openings!)

He’s probably a little fussier than most babies. Or, at least, that’s what we think. Weeks 6-8 were pretty trying, but the pediatrician warned us about that time. Acclimating to bottles has been tricky, and he wants to be held a lot. Also, the witching hour is a thing, y’all.

More and more, though, he’s responding to us–his moms–like he knows who we are! And likes us! And even wants to see us! He smiles more each day, and he wants to talk so, so badly. His little coos–I just can’t.

He’s been apple-picking (which took him out of Illinois for the first time), has a best friend (shout-out: Veen), is sleeping 4.5-5 hour stretches at night, really likes being on his changing table, and is starting to pay attention to the cats.

He’s a little gremlin, but he’s our gremlin!

 

When Sona and I used to question whether or not we really wanted kids–you know, when it was getting down to crunch time and we were getting nervous–we used to jokingly answer, “Who else will we spend Christmas mornings with?”

We were half-joking, at least.

You see, we take holidays seriously around here. That’s mostly due to my influence, I suspect. After spending 14 years with someone who starts eagerly anticipating Christmas in June, it kind of rubbed off on Sona. And, for various reasons, neither of us ever celebrated those big, idyllic family holidays as children. So, we’ve always fantasized about what we call our “Home Alone moment”: coming downstairs on Christmas morning, finding a kitchen packed full of family. All in matching pajamas. And sipping hot cocoa. With Bing Crosby crooning in the background.

Okay, you get it.

The point is, we always kick off our holiday season by going apple picking at County Line Orchard in Hobart, IN. And this year, of course, we were so very excited to take Finn along. He had no idea what was happening, as you can imagine, but we had the best apple-picking trip, yet. And lugging our little babe through the orchard made what was already one of our favorite days of the year that much better–even if he did sleep the entire time (except when he wailed through an attempted mini photo session).

We went with our good friends who happen to have a baby, Veen, just a couple weeks older than Finn. Finn and Veen are BFFs. Or, at least, that’s how their parents have planned it.

Here are some photos of our day!

Can you tell that Finn was SO excited?

When your friends’ baby is like 100x more chill than your baby.

…But you love your little stinker, anyway.

My mama actually didn’t say that. She said something like, “I told you he wasn’t going to sleep at night because you let him sleep all day.”

But don’t mind me. I’m just repeatedly humming this old song by The Shirelles so that I don’t crawl into a corner, rocking back and forth.

That is, today SUCKED. There’s really no better way to say it. And it wasn’t even one of Finn’s worst days, but it felt like one of ours. It’s nearly 9:00, we’ve just showered, we haven’t eaten dinner, I have a laundry list of work-related stuff to do, we have to get up early tomorrow to visit an in-home daycare, and I’m having a pity party.

We should’ve seen today coming. Yesterday, Finn slept all. day. long. I mean, he slept like 16-18 hours, and he’s been sleeping 12-13. We couldn’t keep the kid awake. He fell asleep while eating; he fell asleep while FaceTiming grandparents; he let us take a 2 hour family nap in our bed without making a peep.

Of course, at the time, it seemed blissful, but we’re paying for it today.

He actually slept fairly well last night, but during his 4-7 chunk of sleep, he grunted like a pig for three hours straight. He slept through it, lucky guy, but we were awake the entire time, just waiting for him to start fussing.  Gotta get that kid in his crib!

So, this morning we “woke up” tired, and Finn woke up on the edge of fussiness. It was the kind of morning that even homemade vanilla bean scones couldn’t save (though, they were the highlight of my day).

The rest of the day followed suit. He only took three short, 40-minute naps (and woke up screaming from each of them), despite clearly being exhausted. He fussed more than usual. And he had a code red meltdown when I tried to give him a bottle this evening.

He’s been good about bottles, mostly. However, for reasons only mystics could decipher, he refuses a bottle every other day or so. I spent 40 minutes trying to coerce him into taking the bottle, him in a full-on chin-trembling, face-reddening wail the entire time.

All of this is really compounded by the fact that, in a handful of days, Sona goes back to work, and I’ll be going at it solo, bottle feeding Finn throughout the night (mystics willing) and caring for him five days a week until I start teaching full-time again in January.

Even though Sona and I haven’t exactly been stealing kisses in the corner today (let’s be honest), I’m more than a little anxious about losing her as a parenting partner over the next several months. I know that most moms fly solo from the very beginning, and we’ve been fortunate to have each other for a full two months, but I’m spoiled now. And I don’t want to face the music just yet.

(And now I will post a gratuitous photo of Finn in a shark robe to remind all of us, but mostly myself, that there’s more good than bad.)