IrishOboe

Some days everything seems to go wrong and other days everything seems to line up.  Most days are a bit in between, but here is an account of one day to give you (and my future self) a glimpse into daily life here in our new home in Emmen.

6am Stephan’s alarm goes off. I’m already awake because Joseph needed a snack.  He just want back to sleep so I do too.

6:15am get up and follow my morning routine:

Get dressed. Do a quick sweep of the floors. Process my physical inbox for five minutes. Water the plants.  See the chives, marjoram and tomato grow!!!

10 minutes of “nesting” or making the house a bit nicer than it was the day before, today I wiped the coffee table, de-cluttered the window sill and arranged the candles there, found a home for some oversized sheet music that had been sitting around since the move, etc.

6:45am Joseph wakes up.  I drop what I’m doing (nesting) and greet him.  He pees on the potty.  We dump it in the toilet together and play a little.  I get us breakfast.  Today he ate two little slices of bread and three scoops of yogurt.  I had toast.  I wipe up the high chair and table and notice Joseph grunting so I put him on the pot.  Success!  For some reason he also grunts before having to pee.  We take care of the pee, say goodbye to Daddy as he goes off to work, I do the dishes and we play a little together and nurse (I don’t remember how often we play and nurse but it’s here and there and whenever).  I finish my morning routine:

Open all windows to air out apartment (so humidity doesn’t get high enough for mold to continue to grow)

“Swish and Swipe” bathroom (wipe surfaces and toilet, brush toilet bowl) – 4min

8:30ish I start to work on my “important daily cards” where I alternate 10 or so minutes on a task with 10 or so minutes of focused play with Joseph.  This morning practice was first up so I got out my harp and worked on adjusting the bray pins until Joseph crawled over to me and I gave him a little harp lesson.  He loves the harp.  I’m trying to teach him to be gentle.  He actually seems to have learned a bit how to be gentle and has a better plucking technique than he did before.  It used to be the “grab five strings and pull with all your might never releasing the fingers” and now it’s “grab one to three strings and pull sometimes releasing the fingers and making a nice sound.”  I call the improvement, especially since he’s only had three lessons.  What a smart kid!  I tell him he can’t bother me while I’m practicing (it’s only 10 minutes!) and he listens until I’m almost done then when he comes to grab the strings while I’m doing a run-through of a piece I tell him “no” while I’m playing (that takes brain power!) and he starts crying.  Fortunately I’m at the end of my practice session and we can make up.  Total time the harp is out: 15 minutes.  Not up to conservatory standards but I’ve learned how to make the most of the minutes I have.

8:45am Joseph and I have some fun play time together rolling balls to each other, putting toys on our heads and letting them fall off (okay, so I put the toys on our heads), doing summersaults, seeing math bits (we’re up to 14-23), hanging from the dowel, playing pat-a-cake games.  My favorite is “Shoe a little horse, shoe a little mare, but let the little colt go bare, bare, bare!”  Joseph likes it, too.  Daddy things I’m saying “shoot a little horse, shoot a little . . .” so I guess he likes it, too.

9am Next task up is “Computer Action List Work” so I pull out my list and pick something to work on.  I go overtime but I get the ordering done. Check!

9:20am and Joseph hasn’t peed in nearly two hours.  I manage to keep him on the pot by doing something with the drill that Daddy asked me to.  It keeps him fascinated long enough to go.  Success!

9:30am and I’m not sure what to do.  Joseph is still going strong and maybe we should run and swim in the morning instead of the afternoon.  Hard decision, but I decide for the morning and get everything ready and change.  Then I notice that he’s tired and hasn’t nursed in a while.  We lie down but 15 minutes later he pops off and is crawling around so I decide to go for the run anyway.

9:50 Swim gear is in the back of the bike trailer, my bike lock is looped over the handle and Joseph is still in his baby insert (have to get it removed – he’s big enough to sit upright in it now!).  I decide to go find out where I went wrong on my last run.  Emmen doesn’t have as many paths to everywhere as Basel and most of the time I end up running on a main road, which isn’t so nice.  I find the start of the path that I tried to find the other end of from the other side and we head up it, and we have a clear view down the Swiss military airport runway.  The path curves up the hill a bit and I notice that the fighter jets that often disturb naptime are lined up on the runway ready to take off.  I know it will be loud but I know it will be cool to watch.  I park the trailer, take Joseph out and squat so he sits on my knee, we both have a view, and I can cover his ears (I must sacrifice my own).  A minute later three of the jets take off side-by-side and another three take off shortly after them.  It’s loud, but not yet painful.  They fly into formation and disappear in the sky.  Cool.  Joseph isn’t old enough yet, but he’ll love it very soon.

Time is running a bit short if I’m to have lunch ready in time for when Stephan comes home and I know those jets are going to be making a lot of noise, so I book it as fast as I can to the swimming pool keeping my eye on the sky for when the sextuplet tricksters will swoop down on us.  You don’t get much warning as they plummet at top speeds so the sound doesn’t start to get you until they’re making the sharp curve upward and you know how much power you need to reverse directions like that!  As soon as I see them jump out of the clouds I stop the trailer, run to Joseph and cover his hear just in time for the deafening racket to overwhelm us.  I see adults gaping and children covering their ears.  Who’s wiser?  It’s only three minutes to the pool and they swooped down on us three times.  It’s actually quite cool what they do, but it is VERY LOUD!

10ish and Joseph is still awake and I hope awake enough to swim.  He makes friend in the locker room as usual and pees as soon as I set him on the side of the pool (his diaper was dry when I changed him into his swim suit – I won’t go into how I manage to change and shower us and dry off and get dressed all on my own . . .)  There are other babies in the pool and Joseph makes friends as we practice floating, swimming on the tummy, jumping in off the wall, holding on to the wall (he can on his own for a while), bouncing, and getting water on the head.  At one point I found a beach ball and Joseph was “swimming” after it on his belly (feet outstretched and one hand out to get the ball).  The pool has walls that are raised off of the ground but the water level goes right up to it and spills over to where the drains are.  That would be perfect for teaching babies to climb out of the water except for the fact that the wall is curved (like an upside-down U) which makes holding on difficult and the raised walls mean climbing out could mean a big bonk on the head!  Still, I pushed the ball over the edge and let Joseph grab the top of the wall.  He stayed there a little, but then managed to pull himself up on top of the wall (remember, the water goes up to and over the edge) but here is where he really amazed me:  he stopped, turned to be parallel with the wall, then brought his feet down on the outside edge so he could reach the ground, sit down and play with the ball!  He had started to go down stairs with a kind of side-ways movement, and is more able to turn himself around when he’s on the couch and wants to get down, but this was so smooth and easy and deliberate.  Amazing!  I thought that was a good end to the lesson, so we wrapped up and walked home.  Actually, he peed while on the floor as I was drying off so I had I rinse him off again while I was in my towel . . .

10:40am Joseph falls asleep on our walk back to the apartment (which is about 10 minutes) so I decide to get some gardening in before starting lunch.  I park the trailer at the back of the building and get out my tools.  I set to work on the compost.  I’m not thrilled about taking over someone else’s compost, but I thought I’d give it a stir and add to it and see what happens.  Stir is the wrong word for a compost that’s been sitting untouched for a while.  The bottom layer was nearly as hard as the regular ground and there’s grass growing out of it, but I made some headway breaking up large clumps and loosening the packed layers.  I am slightly more reconciled to the idea of taking over the compost.  It didn’t really smell and lots of it is starting to look like nice dirt.

11am The composed is turned, Joseph is still asleep and I think I can have lunch ready if I start at 11:30.  I turn to the garden patch and try to loosen and break up the earth some more.  It’s a tough job but every bit of progress counts.  11:15 – I’m making good time.  I start to obsess and suddenly it’s 11:25 and the middle isn’t done.  I wield my fork with vengeance ignoring my tired arms and at 11:33 finish covering the ground once over. I clean my tools, then carrying them in one hand while pushing Joseph with the other back to the entrance of the building.  He wakes up so I do the run-in-and-out dance taking care of Joseph and putting away the tools, the swimming gear (finding a spider in the bag!) and the trailer.  I put Joseph on the pot and he goes so the damp diaper must have mean he’d just started maybe?  I put Joseph back in underwear and set him to playing while I tear around the house putting away toys and books and kitchen gear and get ready for lunch.

12:10 Stephan calls that he’s coming home for lunch which means I have 10 minutes.  I start heating the pan for pancakes and Stephan is home before they’re all cooked, but it doesn’t matter too much.  We enjoy the meal as a family and afterwards we enjoy trying to get the blueberry off of Joseph’s mouth, arms, feet, bottom, underwear . . .  Then we enjoy a few minutes of watching Joseph play and being together.  We are blessed!

1:10pm Stephan has to go back to work.  We go to say goodbye and Joseph plays with my shoes in the stairwell by tossing them down the stairs.  Daddy finds it hard to leave.  We pick up the shoes and go to the kitchen balcony to wave goodbye and Daddy bikes off.  I wash up the dishes and take a deep breath.  What a day it’s been so far!  But thanks to routines and picking up after us, the floors are clean, the dishes are clean, the counters are wiped and things are in order.  Looking around makes me feel calm and satisfied instead of frustrated and overwhelmed!  What a change.  Stephan even noticed that the little bits of work I’d been doing on the living room (that 10 minutes of ‘nesting’) were starting to make the room nice.  That reminds me to check my afternoon routine, ah yes, air out the apartment again  - Joseph sees the kitchen balcony door open and he makes a bee-line from the living room so I grab a broom and go after him, sweeping up the junk on the balcony while he plays around with the red pot.  We go inside and have some play time.

1:40pm and I need to pee and Joseph hasn’t in over an hour.  We both sit down in the bathroom and find relief.  It’s been a good potty day so far!  We play a bit and nurse and I think it’s time for Joseph to have another nap.  Naptime is a fight.  I know he’s tired, but he just gets up and crawls off and we don’t have a crib so I can’t just set him down and leave him.  I’m not sure what to do here, but after a while I sing Daddy’s ditty to him and he calms down and falls asleep.  I leave the bedroom: it’s 3pm.  That was about 45 minute of fighting.  I’ll be lucky if I get that much in naptime.  I make a cup of hot cocao and sit down with my Bible.  As a funny aside, I buy fresh raw milk from the farm 15 minutes down the road by foot.  It’s super yummy, but I also buy powdered milk so I can make a hot chocolate without warming milk on the stove (no microwave, remember!).  I find it kind of ironic.

After my quite time I do the first stupid thing all day: I sit at the computer to write a blog post about the day I had.  I really don’t like the computer.  It used to take up all my time and now that I’m learning to be better with my time I find I hardly ever want to be on it or use it.  Email is suffering, but otherwise I don’t miss it at all.  Still, some people want blog posts (though probably only one wants one this long).

3:30pm Joseph wakes up from his nap.  Great, I got a ½ hour nap and I’ve only just started into the blog post.  I get him and put him on the pot.  He pees but still looks tired.  I nurse him in bed and he falls back asleep.  That’s not normal.

3:45pm I do the second stupid thing of the day.  I continue working on the blog post in the same detail as before.

4:45pm I’m still writing the post when Stephan calls to say he’s coming home.  That’s earlier than normal and I haven’t gotten anything for dinner ready.  Fortunately, he said he doesn’t have to eat right away and I’m just about down with this post.  I hope you enjoy it.  We’ll see if I do a third stupid thing and write about the rest of the day.

***It’s 10pm and my bedtime, so suffice it to say the evening was spent in fellowship with Joseph and Stephan as we worked around the house and enjoyed each other.