New Loves

In three weeks with a newborn I'm finding that my tastes have changed considerably. Old pleasures and routines are shifted aside to make way for new ones. I knew to expect this. I knew, for example, that I would come to love little baby coos and giggles more than I would miss getting a full night's sleep. But there are some other things I'm growing deeply attached to that I would never have imagined or anticipated. Things like...

Cups of cold coffee. These days ill take my morning jolt any way I can get it. Sometimes this means I don't pour the first cup until several hours after the pot was fresh. Others, it means drinking the cup I poured fresh hours later. Either way, it's coffee and I call it good!

Evening showers. I've always been a morning shower person, but this habit is not conducive to mornings alone with a baby. Most days, getting a shower is one of the last things I do, after Wonderbaby is fed and sleepy and being watched over by Daddy. I find this small space of alone time and self care to be surprisingly rejuvenating.

Interrupted TV time. Keith and I are big TV watchers. We've been known to take down seasons of our favorite shows in a mere week or even weekend. One of our claims to fame is the realtime 24 marathon, where we watched an entire season of 24 in 24 hours back to back. Now we get through a few minutes of a show at a time in between sweet baby interruptions. We're lucky if we get through one episode a night. And somehow I love watching this way even more.

Chores (AKA getting stuff done). Normally I am happy to let things go. Leave the dishes in the sink, let the laundry pile up to Everest heights, don't worry about the dusty surfaces. But these days, I get such great pleasure for, each tiny accomplishment. And I can only manage one or tow items per day in between all the baby time, it's not like I've suddenly become a housekeeping dynamo. Still, I relish the chance to throw in a load of laundry or empty the dishwasher and then mark one little thing on my ever-growing list completed.