Day 4: The Happiness Project

He hasn’t got any knife skills yet.

One of the things that I hadn’t entirely realized before having Thwacky was how much arm-time babies (or at least this one) require. Not a difficult or unpleasant time, but a lot of it nevertheless.

My parents arrived when he was a month old, at a time when he was nursing pretty much constantly (unlike now when it’s just almost constantly), and during those rare moments when he wasn’t eating, he slept ridiculously briefly and only if he was in my arms. If you tried to set him down anywhere (like, say, his cot), he’d howl.

It made it really hard to cook. There’s actually a photo of me nursing him in one arm and trying to stir something with the other. Bread dough was especially tricky. You can’t knead well one handed.

When my parents were here, I could hand him over for a while so I could make muffins or bread or dinner. It was lovely. I could put on some music, pour a glass of wine, and have a little solo sanity time.

But then they flew back to Canada this morning. Dagnabbit.

This evening I needed to prepare something for upcoming breakfasts, so we’d have something nice and easy to shove in our sleepy faces come morning. However, it involved a lot of big knives and flames and things I oughtn’t attempt with a baby in one arm.

So I took a risk. I brought his vibrating bouncy chair into the tiny kitchen, turned on Radio 6, and somehow, miraculously, he was cool with it. He just looked around casually, as if he did it every day. I managed to get at least half an hour of chilled baby time before he scrunched up his face and howled his comic book Waaaaah.

It’s a start.

The whole Happiness Project collection of posts can be found here.