Fleeting moments of independence

Its amazing what happens to my psyche when my little one takes short naps. This week she decided to nap for only one sleep cycle at a time!! Yikes!! That's about 45 minutes. In that time, I have about enough time to wind down and figure out what I'd like to accomplish during her nap. Then she's up.

I have found that in that short amount of time I generally refresh my cup of coffee, check Facebook (yeah, totally shouldn't be) and start cooking lunch for myself. Maybe I get to eat my lunch before she awakens, but sometimes not. You can imagine what my housekeeping, personal hygiene, running, and business building pursuits look like lately. Currently, I'm listening to a podcast about essential oil chemistry, crocheting on a baby blanket for a 5 month old, drinking my coffee, and pretending like I'm actually inviting people to Evelyn's first birthday party. Oh yeah, and writing this blog post. So unless anyone can let me know where I can have additional arms installed on my body, I need to figure something else out.

Having routines for some of my personal care priorities has helped. Like having to drink a full water bottle before I get to have coffee. Or Evelyn and I take our supplements at the same time after breakfast, then get dressed. But that order of operations doesn't help when I have time to myself to work on whatever I please. If that was the case, then I would knit a sock, contact 3 people about essential oils, then write my blog posts. How long would that take?!? at least a day. Not a helpful solution.

Mind you, I could begin associating some of my regular chores with other common daily activities. Like after we get dressed in the mornings, we get a load of laundry started. Or after the baby is napping I pick up the kitchen, dining room, and living room. In addition to this, Paul had the idea of a physical chore chart (yes, this seems fully appropriate to me right now) that I can check things off as I go, then when he gets home he can see what needs to be done without trolling around the whole house. Isn't that a neat idea for how he can support me as our daughter becomes more and more destructive mobile.

So that just leaves my personal and professional projects. Yarning activities, blog writing (let along yarning writing), and sharing and educating about essential oils. All of those things seem to need to fit into the scant 90 minutes of nap time midday. That's not a lot of time to devote to these things, and she is awake now, so apparently this will be a 2 part blog post.