- Free time
- Trainer
- Hot sun
- Hills
- Water
- Dog
- Porch
- This status update
- Nothing whatsoever
- …?
- Profit!
Generally, recalibrating…
- Metabolism: eating fatty meat (and not much else)
- Strength: training 3x/week
- Irritation: allergy shots 2x/week
- Everything: walking every day
I’m done with working and conferencing. I’m getting as ready as I can for life to change, partly by seeking advice everywhere I can get it.
Oh hey there, reader. Do you have kids? What do you wish you’d known (or paid more attention to) before your first arrived?
Ditto Timothep. Babies are relatively easy, especially at first. Scary… but my experience is that as soon as my first was born, I was sure of what to do. Something just clicked.
Yeah, question the norms. Just because most people do it that way, doesn’t mean it’s good. (Hey, good life advice in general!) But don’t worry too much; babies are working hard on their own behalf, too. Most everything can be fixed or lived with.
Do read Happiest Baby on the Block! Swaddling is becoming the norm, again, but for a (relatively) long time it wasn’t. Your life will suck if you don’t figure it out.
Babies are a lot of physical work and time commitment. As they get older, those things decrease in exchange for mental and social effort. But at first, it’s just a lot of simple effort… and time to be together, and time to be away from normal life, and you should enjoy those parts of it. It’s actually very easy to travel in the first few months, too.
Remember you’re raising an adult, not a child. Children have a job: to grow up. Everything they do is about bootstrapping themselves to become more and more. That sounds harsh, but it’s not - even free play is about learning and growing. They need challenges and failures to grow. Focus on what you need to do to help them level up. Let them guide you.
Remember your marriage. It will fade very slowly; you won’t notice. Refresh it periodically. It’s hard to remember to do this before it becomes an issue.