August 8, 2020

Boredom.

I’m about to lay some real facts on you, so prepare your heart.

Babies are boring.

Like, a lot of the time. Every so often they do something fun or smart or so cute, and that is great! Yay! My baby sat up by herself for the first time, and she is a baby genius! We clap and cheer and record it on video so all our distant relatives and Facebook friends can see how wonderful she is! It is a big exciting time! And then, do you know what happens after she sits up by herself?! She is sitting. And we all stare and wait for her to do the next amazing thing, but that’s not coming for another two and a half weeks. So now she’s just sitting, and we’ve got a lot of time to fill. There are a lot of hours of togetherness in between milestones.

And guess what? Babies don’t even have very long attention spans. You know that awesome inflatable pool you got her because she loves the water? Omg it’s going to be a blast. Your husband spent 30 minutes blowing it up, and she screamed while you put her in a swimsuit and covered her in sunscreen, but it’s so worth it. You take her outside and put her in the pool, and wow, it is so cute. She splashes and laughs and has the time of her life. For a whole 12 minutes. And then she’s over it, and it is time to move on to the next activity.

My baby is awake about 12 hours a day, not counting nap time, which is roughly 4 hours if we’re lucky. So that’s 8 hours we spend together every day. Which doesn’t really seem like long, until you break it into 12-minute activity blocks to match her tiny attention span. That comes out to 40 little pieces of day that I am supposed to fill.

She doesn’t even like TV yet, y’all. What am I supposed to do with all that time?
(…Kidding, obviously.)

It’s not just me who feels this way, so don’t come at me for being a terrible parent. I polled some of my closest mom friends, and they all agreed that their kids are also (sometimes) boring. It was a sample size of 4 people, so it is definitely reliable data. I am not alone in this.

And sure, babies are also adorable and smart and amazing, and it is a joy to watch them learn and grow. But that is a blog for another time.

Today, we are doing some real talk. This is a place for honesty, so I just thought you should hear it from me.

Babies are boring.