I’m led to believe that other babies wake up with peaceful coos or sleep late enough to be woken up by their parents. LT wakes up like a boiling teapot, popping up at 5:47am to stand at the side of his crib and scream-wail. (On the monitor, he looks like a tiny, angry ghost in his flowing sleep sack.) One of us fetches him, gives him a cup of milk, and tries to snuggle him back into a temporary light doze while the other one stumbles around groggily, splashing water on their face and brewing coffee.
I make myself just presentable enough to pass muster for the brief daycare drop-off while GR readies himself for a day of being seen on video calls. LT toddles around with random but determined focus, pulling me by my index finger into the nursery to read him Grumpy Monkey (pounding his chest with his little fists when we get to the part where Jim Panzee screams “I’M NOT GRUMPY!” and alerting me to any bananas on the page [“Bla-la-la!”]), plunging himself waist-deep in his toy bin to fetch his pull-back cars, toddling to the window to point and squeak at bunnies and squirrels.
We leave for daycare at 7:35. They’ve recently re-re-re-modified their drop-off/pickup procedures for COVID, so I don’t go further than the reception desk. I watch LT's teacher lead him by the hand down the hallway and wish him a good day through my mask.
GR and I have separate home office setups—mine on the main floor, his in the basement—stacked on top of one another in the same corner of the house, so we hear each other’s voices and keyboard clacks floating down or up through the common air duct throughout the day. My job involves developing training materials, so I spend part of each day exercising skills specific to that line of work (editing facilitator guides; browsing stock photography; writing production notes) and the other part doing the same things as any other corporate middle manager (answering emails; trading sarcastic IMs with colleagues; telling clients reassuring things over the phone). I tend to get absorbed in what I’m doing, regardless of what it is, and will accidentally go hours without standing to stretch or looking away from my monitor. I set aside 45 minutes in the middle of the day to work out on my elliptical and shower, scheduling it like a meeting on my Outlook calendar to ensure an automated notification alert will snap me out of my work-spell.
Around 3:50, I hear the front storm door clatter, followed by small-foot stomps as GR arrives home with LT, who plunks down immediately for the cherished-by-him ritual of taking off his shoes and depositing his socks into his hamper. We scoop him back up almost immediately to go on a walk around the neighborhood in the stroller, which gives LT the opportunity to kick his legs and point at dogs and us the opportunity to breathe some fresh air and talk. I’m in high dudgeon after reading yet another article that mystifyingly frames the phenomenon of women exiting the workforce due to COVID at wildly disproportionate rates as a cheerful, voluntary "leaning out," rather than the catastrophic result of latent patriarchy placing women in untenable situations where quitting their jobs is the least-bad option available. As GR and I discuss this, he pushes the stroller while I gesticulate animatedly.
Back at home, GR distracts our son while I begin to assemble his dinner, but as soon as LT figures out what I'm doing he charges into the kitchen and starts yelling "Eees!" ("Cheese!"). At first LT eats ravenously, but midway through the meal his mood turns mischievous: he pretends to offer me or GR a bite of chicken before popping it into his mouth, or chomps his food in an exaggerated way he knows will make me laugh. I start chopping vegetables and simmering rice for my and GR's dinner while LT eats.
He's asleep by 6:45, soothed by the predictable routine of getting zipped into pajamas, lulled by songs, and cuddled at his cribside. GR and I serve ourselves portions of the dinner staying warm on the stove and retreat to the basement to watch an episode of Star Trek: DS9 (season two) while we eat. We exchange theories as to why the show shoots itself in the foot so often by concluding otherwise excellent episodes with rushed endings that fail to tie up narrative loose ends. GR eventually drifts back to his office to finish up work or play the bass; I drift upstairs to listen to a podcast or make progress in the book I'm reading; LT snoozes into the night, flopped on his side and curled like a cooked shrimp.
