I’ve now been off of work for a month. Crazy to think that it’s been that long. Crazier still than I still have even longer in front of me. Some musings that I’ve come to during this time…

As of last week I can no longer differentiate between most days, and definitely cannot tell week days from weekends. This is only exacerbated by the fact that my wife doesn’t work a standard schedule. This has created a bit of a weird existence where days and weeks kind of blend into each other. It feels like there’s almost a lack of a demarcation point each week, and that things just keep rolling at an oddly smooth yet slow pace. Definitely not complaining.

A lot of people who stay home with their baby talk about feelings of isolation and cabin fever – I can’t say I’ve felt this way, I’ve rather enjoyed it. That said it’s a very different lifestyle, one in which television plays a huge role. Taking care of Maddie is extremely unpredictable and minute to minute, so it doesn’t exactly lend itself to reading a book – tv becomes a mandatory. Daytime tv is a totally different animal – it turns out that most channels have taken the USA model and have run with it. Years ago when I was in grad school I was off for a full summer and I realized that USA network, essentially alternated days during the week showing nothing but CSI and NCIS from about 8am to 5pm. That’s all changed now – now it’s just Law and Order SVU at all times. It seems that most networks have followed this model, but instead of brooding crime dramas they show marathons of sitcoms.

Over this past month I have watched entirely too many episodes of Scrubs, Friends, a few episodes of That 70’s Show, and somehow think I’ve now seen about every episode of How I Met Your Mother, even though is never watched a single episode before Maddie was born. Now Comedy Central has started showing The Office, so throw that into the mix. But you have to be careful with this…one day I wasn’t paying attention and all of the sudden Mike and Molly was on – and I had my hands full feeding Maddie. Epic fail. These networks know exactly who they’re dealing with, too, as a solid 50% of the commercials around 12:30 are for diapers and baby products (as opposed to the commercials that used to air during The Price is Right on days you’d stay home sick from school which were entirely aimed at senior citizens).

Another thought: whenever I run an errand in the middle of the day, there are people out and about everywhere. What are the people doing? Don’t they have jobs? I’m confused by this.

All of this said, it’s amazing the changes that have occurred over the past month. Watching Maddie constantly change has been remarkable. Now at 3+ months, seeing her develop her own little personality and start to do more is literally awesome to watch. Equally crazy are the changes in myself – no longer to I have any anxiety or concerns when my wife is going to be working a 24 hour shift, in fact on some level I look forward to having the alone time with Maddie. My first post described the chaos of a failed diaper and my first full clothing change; today Maddie unleashed a torrent of poop that no diaper could possibly contain, yet there was no panic, and I was able to get Her cleaned up and changed into a new outfit with no tears. On some level, I guess I’m getting a hang of this whole deal. At least until the next set of changes…