Day 17: The Happiness Project

Nope, definitely not Shanghai

Yesterday was kind of crap, I have to admit. Trying to find a shiny, happy spot was tricky. I didn’t want to fake it by, say, taking a picture of the really lovely, colourful, fragrant cauliflower rice I made for dinner and saying, wow, this was awesome. It was nice. It was fine.

Most of the morning was spent trying to sort out a bunch of food prep in the kitchen while Howly McThwacksalot swore at me from his mat, his chair, my arms. Babies can be as foul mouthed as 19th century sailors, except it all comes out in incoherent growly dipthongs (ooowaaaaaaaah! etc). He was probably as emotionally fragile as I was feeling as neither of us had slept much in days. I don’t blame him for being in a foul mood.

So there’s that.

And the afternoon was a trek out to the local baby wellness centre, where the nurse weighed him and told me he wasn’t gaining enough according to the charts and he’s nursing too long during each session for his age and he’s taking advantage of me by comfort nursing and I need to go to the local breast-feeding group to learn how to do it properly and effectively.

Which may be true. Or not.

But when you don’t have much else going on professionally, small critiques feel bigger. I think this may be why I’m adamantly continuing to cook all 3 meals a day from scratch- because it’s something I know how to do confidently and which I can do well.

I’m determined to stay competent in at least one area of my life.

By the time early evening rolled around, I was feeling sad and tired and ready for bed. I wasn’t ready for that fencing course I’d signed up for. God, no.

But I went.

The half hour walk, with headphones on and no baby in sight, was lovely. The grass in the park was freshly mown and smelled gorgeous and green.

And then I spent an hour stabbing tiny kids (because the beginner class is curiously made up of four little South Asian kids and the father of two of them) and walked back home again through the park in the photo above.

I really liked that.

I came home to find a snoozing baby on the sofa, curled up with husband who was watching a video. Thwacky had been awesome. No howling this time. No hysteria. No punctured ear drums.

I had been gone for two hours on my own and it was fine.

And then he went and slept through most of the night for the first time in ages.

Babies.

Inscrutable little things they are.

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