I’m sure you realize this by now. I may have strong opinions about child-rearing, but I really don’t know what I’m doing. Honestly, sometimes I just don’t really know what to do with a baby. Thank goodness for everyone involved, I have good intentions. Besides the obvious time-sucks–nursing, diapering, dressing, playing with toys, reading books, attempting to nap–what should I be doing to make Wren a fun-loving, wonderful, hilarious being who saves the planet and reaches enlightenment way early?

In my quest to figure out what I should be doing with a baby, I’ve been seeking out play groups and preschool enrichment offerings in our area. Our very favorite enrichment activity I have found so far is baby swim. Once a week we go to a local pool that is kept very warm and we polly-wog around together with other parents and wee ones. There is an instructor and her hair always looks really good. I’m not sure if this is good or not. It’s like seeing a skinny chef. It makes me equal parts suspicious and jealous.

I’m not really trying to turn Wren into a Nirvana album cover, but it’s fun to revisit the 90s, sort of…

Actually, Wren does swim a bit underwater and it’s pretty amazing. But mostly she likes to kick around and play with toys and try to gnaw on the chubby limbs of other babies. Did you know that the British are really into baby swim training? I’m not quite sure why this is. When I think of Olympic swimmers, I do not usually think of the British, do you? Well, this is probably because there is no correlation between baby swim and future swim success. That’s what “they” say anyway. Oh well, it’s a helluva lot of fun so I don’t care what “they” say.

Speaking of what “they” say, Wren is not sleeping through the night AT ALL and she doesn’t crawl. But she loves to pick up tiny bits of food with her peripheral vision and clap her hands, supposedly somewhat “advanced” for her age. Whatever. She’s sleeping right now so we’ve got that going for us since I’m totally exhausted and have a real-world “work” meeting to attend this afternoon so I better try to be my best bright-eyed and bushy-tailed self I can muster. Another cup of coffee is in order and a shower is probably a good idea too since I can still smell a bit of the chlorine from yesterday, yuck…

Dear readers, do you have some insights into what I should be doing with a baby right now? Should I learn some songs, or at least try and figure out what comes after the first two lines of the itsy-bitsy spider? I always get caught there. Help!