The Backyard Barbeque Blues

It has been a busy week. But busy in a good nice summer nights sort of way. With haircuts and dinner out and friends visiting and still finding time for morning coffee on the balcony and a beach or two. 

On Wednesday we packed up some homemade treats and headed across town to a lovely potluck barbeque: one with interesting mammas and pappas who we see out and around but never with enough time or hands to sit back and enjoy each others company and conversation. The weather was perfect and the food was delicious. Frances enjoyed herself immensely - climbing up and down the patio steps and running with bare feet through the grass.

As I drove home, and sang the wheels on the bus at the top of my lungs trying to keep her awake, I realized I was exhausted, but way more than the exhaustion that comes from an average day with a one year old. I was exhausted from an evening of trying to keep one foot in grown-up conversations and one eye and set of hands on a wiggly and and fearless little girl. Completely exhausted. And a little sad too since I felt I didn't end up doing either particularly well. 

Of all the many (crime-fighting world-saving superhero) things we've mastered in the last year, dinner and conversation with other adult humans  - while a tiny human runs amuck at our feet  - isn't one of them. There are some parts of you that grow so quickly after a baby arrives, like the capacity of your heart, and others that are a little slower to the plate, like your ability to devote your full attention to two things at once. 

Hopefully this too will come. Maybe I need to look up parent developmental milestones somewhere. Maybe you only get this badge after two years of service. If not, if this is just one of those things that is forever different after baby, then I'm sure Frances will sooner or later master the everyday dangers of the average backyard, like stairs and chairs, cutting our constant vigil a little bit of slack.

Until then I guess the only thing to do is practice, practice, practice. Bring on the backyards and the barbeque.