Maia Week #11 Battle Report

Maia is now 11 weeks old and somewhere in the 11-12 pound range. The Internet says she should gain a pound a week for the remainder of her life so she should be at a healthy 260 pounds when she's five years old (The math is sound).

At this age, Maia recognizes us with a smile whenever we enter her field of view and can grab a burp cloth with both hands to stuff in her mouth like she's in a hot dog eating contest. Today she grabbed a rattle and shook it. She still hates day naps, but we're getting better at recognizing the paradoxical state of overtiredness so meltdowns occur less often. We do an awful lot of singing these days, namely Senor Don Gato (the best song ever written), as well as Little White Duck and Itsy Bitsy Spider. Maia recognizes all of these and wiggles with anticipation when we begin. I also invent songs on the fly about the characters in her Enrichment Jungle and will share a few of those next week.

This past week was Rebecca's first week back at work as a Physical Therapist Assistant. She's gone for 8 hours a day, including commute, on Monday through Thursday, and then has Friday off. The first 4 days of Stay-At-Home-Dad life have gone pretty well -- Maia likes bottles and I sometimes have about 10 minutes of my own free time to start a game of Overwatch (I really need to install an older game that can be paused -- maybe back to Torchlight 2 or Fallout 4?).

Raising a small human is not a hard job per se -- it's just very demanding of all of one's faculties. As an introvert, I'm surprised at how socially drained I am after spending all day with someone who doesn't even respond in conversations. Babies are like anti-cats in that regard, as cats imbue introverts with energy while babies slowly leach it out, like Daddy is a gas range in a house from the 1960s. Luckily, I can do the chore-y and schedule-y portions of the job in my sleep because that's how I'm built, so I have more energy in reserve after the draining.