A New Kind of Productivity

Kekoa and I have developed a bit of a routine in the mornings.  My alarm goes off.  He's usually already awake, so I sleepily change his diaper and then crawl back into bed to feed him.  While he eats, I doze, read, or do absolutely nothing. 

When he finishes, I pretend to be asleep.  Sometimes I'll roll over so he can only see my back.

And thus begins the great joy of the mornings.  Little hands poke at me, saying, "Mommy, wake up!"  His little head burrows into me.  He jabbers and sqawks and prods, and his legs kick wildly in the air.  Then...I sit up, open my eyes wide, and say: "Boo!"

Let the giggle-fest begin.

We tickle and tell stories (his storytelling ability is rather like Faulkner's: wildly incoherent but somehow captivating) and play peek-a-boo.  We kiss and snuggle and then he flies on the wings of Airplane Mommy.  "It's a bird!  It's a plane!  It's SuperBaby!"

We are early wakers. But we can hardly be called early risers. It may be quite some time before we're "up" in the ordinary sense of the word: dressed, breakfasted, doing housework. 

I love those mornings.  He loves those mornings.  And I know they are teaching him a world of lessons: Love.  Trust.  Language.  Laughter.  Muscle Development. 

But some days, it can be a blow to my pride.  Josh comes home and asks, "So what did you do today?"

Um.  I, uh ... showered (maybe).  I fed the baby...often.   I made dinner.  I emailed a friend, took a walk, read a book.

I'm used to "quantifying" my productivity.  I prefer, when asked about my progress, to be able to say: "I outlined my paper due next month."  "I organized a year's worth of our company's financial records."  Or at the very least, be able to explain my apparent unproductivity: "I sat in a meeting.  For three hours."

You can't quantify a child's snuggles.  You can't measure contributions to his "confidence meter."

Sometimes I find myself giving embarrassingly specific answers to Josh's question, trying to make it sound "productive." In doing so, sometimes those little details become less a byproduct of love and more of a game of oneupmanship - not as a competition with Josh, but to myself.  A laundry list I can check off, incontrovertible proof that I have done something with my day.  Did the baseboards need to be wiped down again?  Probably not, but I did it anyway.

I know in my heart investing in Kekoa is the most valuable thing I can do.  But I still want that concrete evidence for myself: I'm not wasting my time.  I'm not mooching off Josh's paycheck while I sit at home and help myself to whatever catches my eye in the pantry.

I love our mornings together, just Kekoa and me.  I cherish them enough that I don't mind so terribly the sense of laziness for still being in my pjs long after start of business hours.  It's a new lesson for me:   productivity isn't always measured in word counts and employee evaluations. 

In fact, when it comes to the business of raising little people, it almost never is.  So I'm trying to just enjoy it, because right now, for perhaps the only time in my life:

My work is, quite literally, play.