My time is not my own

One thing I would not have predicted missing quite so much after having a baby is being able to choose when I get up. I knew I would have to get up when the baby got up and so forth, but I think I had a naive idea in my head that babies slept 12 or 13 hours a night, and so if Malcolm went to bed at 7 PM, he would sleep until 7 or 8 AM and I could get up before him and have a little time to myself. Ha ha ha. Silly Hope.

Anyway, Malcolm currently sleeps about 10 hours a night, on a good night, which means he is getting up around 6 AM most days. (And this is, I might add, an enormous improvement over the summer, when he was getting up between 4:30 and 5 AM many days, even with a blackout curtain and extended cuddling). Since I rarely ever slept past 7 AM, even on weekends, and usually got up no later than 5:30 on weekdays, 6 AM is generally an OK time to get up. No, it isn't really sleeping in that I miss; it is being able to wake up on my own terms. Yes, I used to wake up with an alarm clock, but I controlled that alarm clock. I set the alarm myself before bed, and if, in the morning, I changed my mind and wanted to sleep in, I could turn it off. Or I could lie in bed and listen to the news for 5 minutes, or 15. (OK, now I am being a little selective in my memories, because in reality, I got up at least an hour before Benjamin most days, so I never actually let the radio just play. I usually hopped out of bed and either turned it off and got out of bed, or turned it off and went back to sleep. None of this lying there waking up slowly business). On weekends, I woke up when I woke up and got out of bed when I was good and ready.

Now, I wake up when Malcolm wakes up. I get up when he is ready to get up, be it 4 AM (as it was over Christmas when we were in Seattle, and two hours behind his internal clock), or 6:15, or 7. I never know when I will have to get up; I can't just hit snooze and go back to sleep. When he is ready to be up, he is ready, no stopping him. Someday, someday I will be able to get up when I want to. But by then I will probably be waking up at 4 AM myself.

Fog walk

The fog starting to lift on Lake Willastein

I have been trying to get this post written for over a month now, but between chasing Malcolm around, holiday preparations (Thanksgiving first and now Christmas) and blogger eating my pictures multiple times, I haven't had much luck. I don't really remember what I had to say, but figure that the pictures are still nice, and since I have been trying for so long, I might as well go ahead and put them up.

Leaves just starting to change. Now they are all bare or brown.

Way back on the first weekend of November, when the leaves were just changing and the ice storm hadn't turned everything still alive into black and brown blahness, we went for a morning walk at Lake Willastein, the city park in Maumelle. When we first arrived at the park, it was so foggy that you could barely see the other side of the lake. 

There  were some pretty neat spiderwebs covered in dew on a bridge along the path.

The sun came out and melted most of the fog, but the lake stayed mostly still, and there were some great reflections.

Great Blue Heron, fishing

It was a lovely morning, especially compared to our weather over the last week or so. It is nice to have something colorful to look back at, instead of the perpetual brown that has taken over for the time being.

Malcolm does the zoo

Looking for penguins

This past weekend Malcolm and I joined our friends Amber and Caroline for a trip to the Little Rock zoo. Benjamin and I took him back in June, but he wasn't as engaged with the world around him yet; this time, he was all eyes as he observed everything.

Granted, he was rather more interested in the ball in the tiger enclosure than the tiger itself, but he did see the big kitty.

According to the zoo's website, these two elephants are new arrivals - retired Ringling Brothers circus elephants and one is 38 and the other 44. Apparently, the Little Rock zoo has a good record of caring for geriatric elephants; the other elephant is 53.

Watching the elephants

Malcolm enjoyed walking around the zoo on his own. The nice thing about the zoo is that almost everyone else there had small children along too, so he and Caroline weren't the only free radicals running around.

It was a lovely day for the zoo - sunny but not too warm. Many of the animals were out enjoying the weather too.

The jaguars and cheetahs were certainly enjoying the sun. 

The playground was overrun with children, most much older than Malcolm and Caroline, but Malcolm did find this set of drums pretty fun.

It was only a couple of days after Halloween, and the zoo hadn't removed all the decorations from their Boo at the Zoo, so Malcolm spent a lot of time pointing out the pumpkins and other decorations.

We were able to spend about an hour and a half before the kids started getting tired and overwhelmed. That was enough to see most of the zoo, but not quite. We missed most of the monkeys and the petting zoo. Oh well, next trip.