Last week Karis came over on Friday to spend part of the day. Karis' mom Leah and I were piloting our baby swapping arrangement which will theoretically allow us each to spend one baby-free day (or portion thereof) at our respective workplaces. Rowan had spent Monday afternoon with Leah and Karis, which from what I hear was an interesting experience. You see, Karis had been sound asleep when I arrived and dropped off Rowan. So this poor one-year-old woke up from a coma-like nap only to find her mother holding a strange baby who seemingly came from nowhere! I think I would have had a royal conniption too. But it sounds like Karis had a big enough one for both of us.
Anyway, it was lots of fun watching a one year old and a two month old at the same time. They paid no attention to each other, and as long as Karis had the attention of Angel (our Siberian husky) there were no complaints. Later that evening I was noting on the phone to my mom that Karis is nearly too tall to fit onto the diaper changing table. The changing pads come in a standard size, so it's not as if you can just buy a bigger one as a baby grows. My mom laughed heartily and said, "You mean you lifted her onto the changing table?" I replied perplexedly, "Of course. Where else could I change her?" My mom wisely stated that back in her day, people would change a diaper on the floor especially if the child weighed...oh...25 pounds or so, which Karis does!
It was with this catty suggestion that I had a bigger thought. There is definite inertia involved in raising a baby. I can already feel it. I mean, if Jill hadn't suggested I offer Rowan more than a 4 ounce bottle at night just in case he wanted it, I would have still been using the little bottles just because that's what I started out doing. If Mom hadn't suggested I push the last feeding of the day back to 10pm so that we could reduce Rowan to one nighttime feeding rather than two, we would still be waking up at midnight and 4am to feed him rather than just once at 2am. This inertia, while the stuff of comedy on the surface, seems to me a dangerous thing. Good thing I'm now aware and on guard! It's sort of like solving a little puzzle every day. It's a puzzle consisting of essentially one question: what am I still doing that no longer makes any sense at all, and what should I be doing differently?