New Appreciation

Here's a picture of Istra sitting up all by herself. She can actually do it without supporting herself with her hand as she is doing here. She probably could have done it a whole lot earlier too, except it turns out that her diapers are too tight. Yep, we discovered that our baby could sit up by herself one day when we put her down naked. We put her diaper back on and she promptly flopped over. She is sitting here in this picture, clothed, because her cloth diaper underneath the wool soaker shorts (knitted by Aunty Belle) is not done up. You see, Istra is holding the fastener in her hand.

So Istra is too fat for her diapers. Though, at our doctor's appointment on Monday we found out that she's not as fat as 75% of other babies. Istra weighed in at 15 lbs and is in the 25th percentile for everything. So, she's a wee cute baby and the doctor is not concerned.

Anyway, what I wanted to write about is actually me--me, independent of Istra. Yesterday I had three glorious hours of independence when Tim and I decided to do a sort of baby-swap in hopes that we would both get some work done. We would each look after Istra for an hour and then get an hour "off" to work. I made some progress on my essay on Sir Philip Sidney--but more than that, I actually enjoyed writing it. In fact, it was blissful. I don't think it has anything to do with the subject itself; rather, I think maybe having someone else dictate practically 24 hours of my day has given me a new appreciation for those few hours I have to myself and accomplishing something for me. Perhaps not really accomplishing much in the past 6 months has given me an exaggerated appreciation for those 5 pages I wrote yesterday. Yes, yes, I know I've accomplished (so far) the supreme task of keeping another human being alive and thriving, but remember we're talking independent of Istra. I just found it very striking yesterday to find myself so enjoying academic writing, which I have in the past cursed with every strike of the keyboard.

Maybe I will want to persue that PhD after all.