Urban Babysitting...

There's a theory of new motherhood known as the "babymoon." You lounge around the house bonding with your baby for the first month or so, and keep the visitors to the minimum. This gives mom a chance to recover from delivery and get to know her baby, gives dad a chance to snuggle with his new family, and everything gets off to a rosy start.

Sounds good in theory right, but I'm not a sitting around the house kinda girl. The first week yes, I needed the rest and recuperation, and even the second week I kept "fieldtrips" to a minimum. After that though? Where are we going to go today Ragnarson? I'm not talking about a full day of running errands, or anything like that, just one "getting out of the house," expedition per day. Sometimes we would meet Eli for lunch, last Sunday we went to the yarn store...but usually we go to "the caffe."

I don't know if I've blogged about the caffe before, but it's a local coffee roastery which is cool in and of itself. The crazy thing about the caffe however, are the irregulars. If you come in more than once, you are adopted into the family, and the next time you come in you can expect to be greeted by name. It took me awhile to get used to this actually, since I'm not a touchy lovey type of girl...but the coffee is so good I couldn't stay away, and I'm used to it now.

When they found out that I was pregnant the first question was "can we be part of your village?" At the time I said "sure," thinking, "village, whatever." But that was before I had a 26 day old baby. When you have a newborn the idea of a village becomes really appealing.

Our morning ritual: sleep in as long as possible, then get up and nurse for exactly 15 minutes on each side (the minimum amount required to travel the 5 blocks up to the caffe). Bundle the baby into one of our many baby carriers. (I went baby carrier crazy, I have 5 of them). Walk up to the caffe and pass the baby off to anyone sitting at the bar, this gives me time to order a cappuccino and possibly even take a sip before he wants to nurse again. Whoever has him will bring him back to me as soon as he starts crying, so it works out pretty well. Then he'll nurse for awhile while I do a crossword puzzle or (yay!) update the blog, and when he's done (okay, he's never done, when I pry him off after an hour or so) I pass him over to someone else and finish my (now lukewarm) cappuccino. It's friggin fantastic! Before he was born I mentally committed myself to "in arms" parenting, meaning no strollers, no cribs, keeping him close to me while I'm working throughout the day, etc. I still think that it's important, but I've realized that it doesn't always have to be my arms he's in.

The other great thing is that there is another couple at the caffe who have a six week old baby, so at times there will be two nursing babies hanging out at the coffee bar. Always a plus when you're getting used to nursing in public.

Things I just realized yesterday. 1). the computer fits in the diaper bag. 2). while Ragnarson is being passed around by all and sundry I could theoretically knit something!

Ragnar...bring me my village!!