When a baby joins your household for the first time, lots of people give you lots of advice. A majority of it is compassionately bestowed, unsolicited, and not necessarily super-duper helpful. Babies are notoriously variable, and advice is often either anecdotal and not very transferable (e.g., "FYI, Pfeffie would only nap while hanging upside down like a bat.") or impracticably vague (e.g., "Try to find time for rest."). There are also a lot of New Parent Truisms -- things that older and more experienced parents will sagely relate as a means of setting your expectations for what parenthood will be like. ("The first few weeks will be a total blur.") People offer help and wisdom as a way of expressing love, and it's gracious to accept those offers, even if the advice ultimately goes unused. Advice-givers are trying to be a supportive force in your life, to show they care.
That said, my favorite piece of advice came from my mother-in-law, who on more than one occasion admitted that she couldn't really remember anything at all from when her children were toddler-age or younger, and so had no recommendations to give. Her "advice," such that it was, was simple: Take photos and write stuff down. The things that seem so vivid to you now, so obvious or striking or common, that you're sure you'll remember? You won't.
It's great advice because it actually applies to everyone, even if it's maybe extra applicable to parents of small children whose quirks change constantly. And like the best advice, it's actionable, and in theory seems easy to implement, but is in reality weirdly difficult to practice -- because habitually writing mundane stuff down is boring, and your present moment in time always feels stable and memorable and not worth mentioning. Things rarely feel like they're changing all that much, until they have.
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Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2021:
- GR and I will get vaccinated by the end of June (and not earlier than May). 'Til then, our lives during the first half of the year will feel like a very gradual reopening, as other, more at-risk family members and friends get vaccinated before us, community transmission levels go down, and our circle slowly widens.
- I will undertake between five and ten small home improvement projects (e.g., repainting a room or exterior door, replacing light switches or house numbers or light fixtures, etc.)
- LT's first word will be one of the following: dada, mama, duck, or up.
- GR and I will spend at least two nights away from LT, leaving him in the capable hands of an aunt/uncle or grandma/grandpa.
- I'll go on one of Chicago's architecture tours. (Never been! Hear they're great!)
- I won't return to work in an office, and will instead continue to work from home full time. I will, as always, love this setup.
How Prescient I Actually Was:
- I kind of nailed it! Both GR and I snagged shots relatively early and so were fully vaxxed by the first week of May. Although our going-about-town habits are still far from what they were pre-pandemic, even with the roller coasters of Delta and Omicron, we spent the year visiting more freely with family and friends and dabbling in normalcy.
- Technically a failure, because "between five and ten" was an undercount. I painted the front door, replaced the house numbers, installed a new storm door, replaced the exterior light fixture, reupholstered the dining room chair cushions, replaced the ceiling fans and light switches in all the bedrooms, hung a new curtain rod in the living room, painted my desk, retrofitted a new base to an end table, repaired some molding, painted the basement ceiling, and replaced two can light fittings. This list omits some smaller/more fiddly projects.
- I think "dada" was his first word? I've always been flabbergasted when I ask parents what their kids' first words were and they respond with uncertainty: How could you not note or remember something so consequential?! Now, I get it. Kids do lots of babbling before they actually land on proper words, and it's hard to track when a sound/referent relationship has actually clicked. Which is why, even though "dada" was probably LT's first word, "ba-lalalalala" (for banana) is the one that leaps to mind.
- Success! All together, we've spent about a week's worth of nights away from LT, who seems perfectly happy to get us out of his hair for a few days at a time.
- Also a success! As part of a Chicago-based staycation, GR and I joined some friends for a river boat architecture tour. It was, in fact, great.
- Yep. My company actually declined to renew the lease on its office space in January last year and still hasn't found a new one. It's unclear whether or not they're really looking.
Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2022:
- Screw it, I'm just going to say it this time: I'll get pregnant again. (If I don't, rest assured the whole Not Getting Pregnant thing will have loomed large over the entire year, as it's already loomed over the latter half of 2021. I realize this parenthetical is hedging and therefore against the spirit of a predictions list, but there's a superstitious part of me that feels like I need to cross my fingers here.)
- In spite of our planned vacation to Florida at the probable height of the Omicron surge in mid-January, my family will avoid getting COVID (that we know of).
- I'll go to a concert -- probably of the rock variety, but a symphony/classical music counts.
- I'll get involved in my community in some way (e.g., volunteering; joining a village board or parents group; attending council meetings).
- Neither GR nor I will have any major changes to our careers or working situations, save for GR resuming some work-related travel later in the year.
- I'll repaint at least one room in the house, even though I have already painted literally every room in this house, because I'm otherwise running low on projects and can't help myself.
