baby chores

Well, this move is continuing to be endless. I now have my sights on October for living in the new space. The good news is that everything is in, just not in place. Posts will continue to be sporadic around here until we get settled.

As I think about this new home, where I will begin to raise my son and create a new life for myself, I imagine what life might look like. I have so many aspirations that it's sometimes frightening. There's so much I want for Gabriel's childhood that sometimes I get overwhelmed with all the goals and ideals and images.

It's time for a get-real moment. Back to basics. Or, in our case, establishment of basics. What are the basics? I think for us, these need to be things like:

- a weekly rhythm
- a daily checklist
- established eating patterns

Being a single mom of a crawling (crawling!) baby has its tricky spots. My trickiest spot is remembering everything I "should" be doing with him on a daily basis, especially as our days are currently kind of chaotic. So I came up with an idea of making a "daily chore chart" for the baby. Here's a preliminary list of his "chores":

- read at least one book
- brush teeth twice (did you see that word "teeth" there?)
- eat "real" food once a day
- go outside and touch the grass
- practice baby signs
- listen to enriching music (various Wee Sing albums, hymns, classical)
- bedtime prayers


In addition to those things, I want to have him in the baby carriers with me fairly often, because I am a little bit attachment parenting-y. I also want to start introducing him to "work," Montessori-style. Basically this means giving him the opportunity to get really absorbed in one activity. He seems to have a fairly short attention span (being a normal 9-month-old baby boy), and I want to work with him on building his concentration. That probably sounds very helicoptery and over-achievery, but let's face it: him being able to focus on one thing for a little while without requiring my participation is a self-preservation mechanism on my part. (For those of you interested, I'm using this blog in particular as a launch pad.)


What are some other "chores" you think would be appropriate for a baby?