On Time and Sleep and other fancy things

With the new baby in house for over a month, I am learning the new perspective on time and sleep that each new parent learns. The many warnings of, "Say goodbye to sleep" and "Go see lots of movies now" are warnings communicated in simple terms.

Granted, Reena and I are both home full time, and that is a huge precondition to my new perspective. A full-time parent, whether single or unsupported, has a Herculean task. However, I have found that my sleep hours have decreased a bit, but the most interesting thing is my notion of time and sleep have radically changed. They are no longer tied to the rising and setting of the sun, but now they revolve around the sleep cycle of the baby. Reena and I trade off the night with one of us staying up until 3:30 or so and the other waking with the dawn chorus. Rose is beginning to catch 3 to 4 hours of sleep at a time, so this doesn't necessarily mean that the responsible party has to be up during that whole time--it just means it fairly often.

Thus, I am getting about 5 hours of sleep each night--an amount that would not work for teaching full time but is seeming to suffice for parenting an infant. Yes, this parenting gig is much less work than teaching full time, so far. This will get even more doable now that the New York trip is over (I took my class to New York for three days and two nights last week), the yearbook is done (I can't even describe the frustration that inDesign has been giving me), final reports are written, and the year-end DVD is authored and produced. Then it will just be my normal projects patiently waiting their turn to be done. Baby has certainly ratcheted the pace of getting projects back a further notch.

Next up during or after all of this is new material on the freedmanriles website with Rose. I have the structure down. Now I just have to build it.