And I’m a little slow adapting mentally.

Now Claire wakes at 6 a.m. So do I. We’re going 3 to 3.5 hours before her first nap (she won’t sleep unless she’s really tired). That puts my free time to take a shower smack at the same time Husband gets up to shower. She’s not really napping much in the afternoon anymore. Maybe a half hour to 45 minutes.

Claire is mobile now, and I see how much of my daily life will now become an active vigil protecting her from hurting herself as she explores. That makes getting other tasks done a little harder.

We eat dinner (but lately I haven’t even thought about dinner so we’ve been eating take-out). I’m very tired a lot of the time. By 6:30 (Husband comes home) we eat, and he has time with Claire. He puts her to bed at 8 p.m. After dinner I pick up toys, load the dishwasher, prepare the coffee maker, get out what I need for Claire’s meals the next day (bib, towel, oatmeal in a cup), make milk. Then I’m “off-duty” and it’s about 8 to 8:30. If I haven’t showered, then I have the option to do so.

Then I’m so exhausted I can hardly see straight. I have about 1 to 1.5 hours of “me time” before I crash into sleep. Yet I don’t have the mental energy to concentrate on anything, so reading is difficult. The list of books on my sidebar has been there a long time; it will probably take me the whole year to read those. There’s not much of me left to enjoy at this time of day.

What I’m saying is: I work a 14-hour day and have 90 minutes to myself before sleep (if I want to get a good rest to be functional next day). Husband, on the other hand, gets up at 9 a.m., goes to work at 10:00, comes home at 6:30 p.m., puts Claire to bed at 8:00, and then has time to himself. He usually stays up until 1 a.m.

It doesn’t seem fair. Am I complaining? Maybe a little. I’m really tired, but not just physically. I need to somehow replenish other aspects of myself sometimes too. The office/art room is a disaster, all horizontal surfaces covered, so I’m overwhelmed when I enter the room. Can’t even clean it up, but that must happen before I can start anything else.

This is the life of a mother: long hours. A man works from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done.