We’re in a new time zone: babytime. Time follows a new set of rules that keep changing all the time. The hours and minutes move more slowly than it does in the rest of the world. It can take one baby hour to fill fifteen minutes of standard time when you’re stacking cups again and again for a baby to knock down. Yet time moves faster, too. In thirty seconds of standard time spent wiping down a highchair in the kitchen, a baby can magically work his way across the living room and end up sitting in the corner next to the couch.
Babytime doesn’t allow for sleeping in and lounging with the paper and a cup of tea. You can’t stroll for hours and eat a late margarita-filled lunch. Meals must be eaten at very regular intervals. Naps must be taken. If the baby drill seargant’s food and sleep commands are ignored, there will be hell to pay in the form of daytime fussies and nightime waking and extra push ups. Those foolish enough to mess with the baby schedule will quickly learn the error of their ways.
Our lives are now structured based on invisible babytime watches. We do not go out to dinner at 6:30 pm. Waiting more than ten minutes for a table doesn’t work. A missed nap re-sets the babytime clock. A long nap is a temporary babytime time-out, a two-hour return to Mountain Standard. We need an announcement to come over the speakers when childless friends come to visit, reminding them to set their clocks back, that they are now entering babytime. The only antidote for the jetlag is caffeine, combined with a generous dose of baby grins, drool, and cuddles.
In eight months of standard time, I’ve lived a few baby time lives. It feels like my son has always been around. Is there ever a time that I haven’t been singing You Are My Sunshine, trying to recall if there’s more than one verse? Can there have a been a time when I didn’t bop around the kitchen, waving my arms in the air, to make Axel laugh? How could I have thought I was so busy before Axel came to fill my days and nights with storytime, bathtime, pot and a spoon playtime, and endless repeats of diaper changing time? How could there have a been a time before Axel’s warm little body filled my arms and his soft hair tickled my chin? It seems that I’ve always been Axel’s mother, even before he was present.
But still it feels like he just came home from the hospital yesterday, figured out how to roll over five minutes ago, started sitting up thirty seconds ago, and now he’s crawling across the alphabet mat on the floor on a mission to finally capture the most elusive and coveted target of all: the dog’s tail. He’s changing at full speed, sprinting over milestones and dragging me, his slowpoke mother, along behind him.
There’s a clock in Axel’s bedroom that receives a signal from the master atomic clock and so keeps perfect time. The battery is low on Axel’s clock, so the hands hover at 9:05 for three hours, or spin around ticking off hours by the minute as it tried to find its bearing. I haven’t changed the battery though it’s been alternating between whirling and freezing up for weeks. It’s a visual reminder of how time has been reconfigured that sits up on the shelf next to the sock monkey and the storybooks with shredable paper pages. It keeps baby time. That’s my standard time zone.
And Toddler Time is like Baby Time but moodier and less predictable.
My little one is almost 6 months and since naps started to equalize an bedtime can be 6:30 some nights, I’ve been feeling the effects of baby time. Gone are the days when I could just pop her in the sling and still go to a party or pop in to see friends. Now nap times and routines must be obeyed! Or my life becomes hell. Alternately, I feel rushed as hell, deliriously happy with smiles and giggles, and bored out of my mind, trapped in my house. Your post is exactly my life now, just with less baby mobility. Great post.
In baby time you count the hours until he wakes up and you can hold him and then maybe 30 minutes later start counting the hours until naptime.
I feel exactly like that too, time is such a different notion ever since I became a mother… The time when he wasn’t there is simply unimaginable now. He’s 18 months and I can’t believe how a big boy he is now, so skilled and “independent” and chatty, but it was only last week that he spent days and days practicing sitting up! People who have kids preparing to go to college tell me it’s still like that, it still seems like they were rocking them to sleep yesterday.
Kind of breaks your heart, isn’t it? Even though we sometimes miss our previous freedom, I have a feeling we’ll very much miss baby (and toddler) time pretty soon.
Gorgeous post. Gorgeous child.
my daughter turns one on Wednesday, and it seems like both the longest and shortest year of my life.
First off, HYSTERICAL picture of Axel. Loooove it as they say on Dragon Tales. Secondly, I totally get it. Seriously, before I got pregnant, what did I do with my brain? All those extra hours not occupied with Cooper? It is CRAZY.
Oh, EG, you just filled me with fright about toddler time.
Melissa – I had that same thought this Saturday.
Ditto here, Amanda. Happy birthday to your girl!
Great post, Oz. I can’t believe how fluid, rhythmic and weird time gets once you have a baby.
Here they are, the lyrics to You Are My Sunshine:
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/sunshine.htm
Regarding the lyrics to Sunshine: lovely, then stalkerish, then totally random… the best fishing and long tall corn? The biggest shrimp and sugarcane?
EG,
Yupe but dont forget MESSIER as well
It’s just that much more FUN to.
Stalkerish is right, Lise. And all that Louisiana stuff? I think I’m going to just keep on making up my own, because I don’t really want to start singing about gumbo. Thanks, Kit N Kumari – even though they’re weird, at least I’ve now read them all!
no problem… Google search reveals there is a cover done by Johnny Cash. Perhaps that sheds a little light on the subject.
so true. i love your blogs.
The other Melissa nailed it with her comment. So true.
I find myself wondering how, in my childless days I ever felt like there wasn’t time enough to get things done. Now I realize I had TONS of time back then.