Monotony, etc.

It looks like E's officially dropped a nap. Today and yesterday we put him down for just one, at noon. Yesterday he slept for two hours; today, an hour and a half. That doesn't seem like enough, but maybe it is for him. We also realized yesterday that his top two teeth are about to break through. Any minute. It hasn't disrupted his nighttime sleep too much (surprisingly), but he's been very short-tempered during the day. Yesterday evening we went to Jonas's birthday party, and E was a basketcase. It was embarrassing, to be honest. Very, very high maintenance.

He's been so tired in the evenings I haven't been able to keep him from falling asleep nursing. And with the impending arrival of the top teeth (at long last--almost four months after the bottom), I've backed off on the weaning from the middle-of-the-night feeding. I tried not to nurse him on Friday night and he freaked to such an extent that I blame it on teething. The last two nights he hasn't woken up at all until 5 a.m., and I've nursed him then and counted it as the morning feeding even though he's gone back to sleep.

Blah, blah, blah.

The coming week is stretching out ahead of me like a . . . I don't know what. A big, blank canvas (I like that image), a never-ending tunnel (too depressing, but a bit closer to how I feel). One nap a day . . . it's throwing me, along with E's mobility (he's getting fast!) and the mini-tantrums he throws regularly now. And the move from baby food to real food, which I'm not close to mastering. It feels like a lot of change at once, in more fundamental ways than the usual crazy amounts of change having a baby involves.

Then there's the fact that so much of what I do feels tedious and boring and repetitive lately, from the constant cleaning and other household chores to the rituals involved in caring for E. I mean, this is ALL I DO. Day in and day out. There's some sweet, sweet stuff in there, but mostly it's just filler.

I worry that I'm not cut out to be a stay at home mom. I worry that having another baby when E's two or three would push me over the edge. TJ pointed out that there is absolutely no reason for me to worry about this right now. And he's right, I guess. Technically.

I thought I loved being pregnant, by the way. But lately when something happens that reminds me of what it felt like, I feel incredibly relieved not to be pregnant anymore, and I dread the thought of going through all of that again. (I feel like a jerk saying this when I think of my friends who are trying to conceive and would give anything in the entire world to be pregnant.) Obviously I'm so, so thankful to have given birth, and there's nothing I wouldn't have gone through to end up with E. Amputate both my legs? No problem! Walk around with a catheter the rest of my life? Okay! Anything.

On that note, I think I'll go ahead and wind this post up. Nothing good is going to come of it, I'm afraid. Incidentally, now that we're down to one nap a day, I'm going to be cutting down the time I spend online. I'm also going to *try* to spend more time reading. As in books. I read quite a bit this weekend (relatively speaking) and it felt good. I'm almost done with RUN by Ann Patchett, and I finished ANDY CATLETT by Wendell Berry last week. If I'm not mistaken, these are the first books I've read since E was born (not counting a mystery or two I read in March when we went to visit TJ's parents in Florida). It's hard to stop everything else and commit to reading, but it's incredibly relaxing and it fills me up in a way that nothing else does.

Doh! I forgot I read EAT, PRAY, LOVE earlier this year. Had to confess . . .
(And I liked it, as much as I didn't want to.)