The Family *roll

Many years ago I traveled Europe by myself for a little over a month. It was great fun of course, but I remember being surprised at learning that I am a creature of habit: as much as I enjoyed changing places every few days and meeting new people, I really missed being surrounded by my stuff and doing the many little things that made up a normal day for me. I missed my routine.

The past four months have been largely routine-free. The early months with a baby do not provide sufficient predictability to establish anything like a routine. Throw moving and not really having any work into the mix and you have days that, for the most part, lack structure. And I like structure dammit. Returning to school, albeit this time as the person standing in front of the class, has been excellent, then, for introducing a rhythm into our lives. Between my classes and Emily’s various commitments, we have places we have to be at set times for set lengths. The result is that, after months of feeling somewhat untethered, we’re now feeling more like we inhabit real lives.

But although the last few months have been relatively routine free, there is one routine that has been in place almost since day one. Every morning, I take Ellie for a couple hours while Emily sleeps. In the early days, I did little more than look at her and walk with her until she fell asleep (if she fell asleep). For the past month or so, however, we spend the morning listening to music. This takes two forms. First, I sit Ellie on my lap and we watch the iTunes visualizer while listening to whatever strikes my fancy (the regulars include The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Debussy, Bach and Bill Evans). When I first started doing this, she could last for little more than two minutes. These days, we can sit there for as long as 20 minutes. Sometimes I sing along, but oftentimes, we’re just silent, listening. After that, I put her on her mat and stick a record on. She listens (well, in the very least she hears) and plays while I putter around doing various things and/or play with her. Then, some 30 minutes later, when she’s getting sleepy, I pick her up and dance her to sleep, usually while drumming out a rhythm on her bum (Emily is concerned that I will give Ellie a strange kink). If I’m lucky, she falls asleep in my arms. If not, she goes to a reasonably well-rested mommy, who feeds her and puts her down for her morning (cat) nap.

The day will come when either I won’t be able to stick around for so long in morning or she just won’t be up for sitting around listening to music. But for now, it is my favorite ritual.

In other news, we still don’t know who Ellie looks like. Here we are testing the theory that she looks like Bruce, Em’s Dad:

Looks just like him, no?