My life has taken on this surreal routine.

My day is basically segmented into three hour blocks and I re-live those three hours over and over and over.

It starts with Leina waking up and looking for the boobies. The first hour is the nursing routine. Nurse, burp, poop, change diaper, nurse, burp, diaper check, for about an hour or so.

Next, we get play time. Since Leina is still a wee tot, playtime lasts about 20 minutes and consists of her watching the crib mobile or sitting in bouncy chair while I read to her or make funny faces. Depending on her mood, she may last 5 minutes or 20 in active mode. Most of my daily excitment comes from the suspense of not knowing how long she’ll be active before she starts to fuss and cry. It’s an edge-of-your-seat, nail biting, riviting moment while I wait for her to start yawning and getting grumpy. When that happens, we move into the second half of the hour which is trying to get Leina to sleep. This kid doesn’t like going down for naps so it usually takes about twenty minutes to get her to sleep which rounds out the end of the second hour.

The last hour is nap time. I carefully lower myself into bed and place Leina in my arms and we both nap together. Unfortunately, my idea of a nap is sleeping for a couple hours. Leina’s idea of a nap is sleeping 30-50 minutes so we’re still working out the details.

And then, like clockwork, she wakes up looking for boobie and the cycle begins again. And again. And again. And again.

People often tell me I need to “get out of the house”. I’m sure they think this is sound advice but I really don’t how exactly to do that. I suppose if she slept longer I could take her out with me but she doesn’t. And when she wakes, she wants to eat NOW. I’m all for the natural beauty of breasfeeding but I’m not quite ready to be whiping it out in, oh, say, the produce aisle of Safeway. Maybe later, but not now. Besides, those quick naps are the only chance I have to catch up on my sleep and I’m not about to miss out on any one of them!

And so I’ve come to actually enjoy my groundhog life. I know what’s coming when and I can just go with the flow. This kid has a game plan and I’m just along for the ride really. Once I gave up trying to get her to adjust to me, things really smoothed out. Now, I just follow her cues and we all get along just fine.

Well, the cycle is about to begin again. I’m off the prep the boobies for my little girl. Let the fun begin!