Lately

Maine, 2012

This morning we woke up very late (thanks to a sister-in-law watching the babe) and took a very long walk to the aggressively charming Island Grocery (otherwise known as the "Groc", because it used to have a rickety old sign that had lost the letters E-R-Y.)

As far as I can see the advantage of having a newborn is that you are forced to slow down and thus feel excessively pleased when you manage to accomplish one thing, like a good walk, in a day.

The advantage can sometimes feel like a disadvantage. If you fight the new, sluggish tempo of your days, you feel incredibly frustrated. If you go with it, it's actually kind of liberating. No running around trying to please everyone by saying yes to things you are on the fence about. Only the things you really want to do win out. For every overstuffed day you feel like the next day you get a hall pass to do very little.

I do think that after the mayhem of living in New York for eleven years, learning how to slow down is quite a revelation. So many new parents struggle with it, but I think it's a matter of perspective. Thank god we don't have to do All.The.Things!