Well it has been a doozy of a winter here in Minnesota. I can see why everyone warned me about catching cabin fever. It would be very easy to stay warm and cozy indoors and yet go INSANE! Thus, it is consistently on my mom agenda to keep a running calendar of activities for Cole and I to attend or participate in to get us out of the house even on the coldest arctic days. Something interactive, social or otherwise educational or engaging. My wish is to continue to trigger those growing brain cells in Cole's vastly expanding mind and expose him to something new as often as possible. However, these activities only kill two hours or so of a very long fourteen hour day with the little guy. If you add in the preparation time of getting dressed for the subzero weather, you knock off additional minutes but you are still left with a very long sometimes seemingly endless day.
A day in the life of Cole still begins way before sun up (4-5am) and ends around 7pm. Despite our desire to push his time clock closer to ours, a specialist has determined that Cole is nature's anomaly. He is a geniune early bird. I could go on about this revelation but in all honesty, I am so beyond conversing about our chronic sleep deprivation that it doesn't warrant another word.
We cannot escape our home by taking long outdoor walks due to the severe cold a large majority of the time. When we have a warm day (20 degrees) we do bundle up and head out to clear our heads. As for the other 28 days of the month, I struggle as to what to do for some exercise. Cole does not do well at the gym's daycare. They love him there but he has a tendency to begin screaming his head off AFTER I get on a treadmill and get my heart rate at its' peak with sweat streaming from my unconditioned body. At that point, the nursery assistant comes and finds me to wrap up my workout (without a cool down) to go collect my angel. As for the suggestion made at my mommy and me class of looping around the MOA (Mall of America), my idea of an endorphin producing cardio workout is not defined as dodging the thousand other strollers veering off course as mother's multi-task by talking on their cell phones while their wee ones zone out looking at neon retail signs, I think you can gather what my ONE attempt at this "fun" was. No thanks. I did it once and only once hence my personal analysis.
I know I should revel in being at home with Cole and I do 80% of the time. I cannot fathom someone else having shared his days so intimately with him over the past 15 months as I have but the isolation I feel some days at spending an inordinate amount of my waking hours confined to our house doing a lot of what seems like nothing is hard to digest. Simply at times I want to work again. My purpose as a mother is not measured and weighed like my workload as a professional working woman was and there are days I wish for my annoying colleagues and noisy office. I must remind myself when I crave my previous life that what seems like doing nothing with Cole day in and day out during these long winter weeks is actually doing more than I ever have before. I am shaping a life of the future and that is the most important job of all.
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