Grandma is wise

Back when my parents were here (a whopping 4 weeks ago--good grief, having a baby has totally distorted my perception of time since 4 weeks feels like 4 months right now) my mom told us an hilarious story about how when I was a newborn she and my dad made all of these little charts and graphs to try to figure out if there was any rhyme or reason to my behavior.

(I should add here that I was an incredibly difficult and colicky newborn, so I don't blame them for trying to figure out what made me tick and/or scream all the time)

Naturally, there was no method to the infant madness, and they gave up on the charts after realizing that I just did things when I darn well felt like doing them.

Well, guess what brilliant idea I had over the weekend? That's right, a lightbulb went off in my head and I thought "Hey, let's chart Luke's meals, naps, and moods so we can figure out what his schedule is!"

I am such an idiot who needs to listen to my mother more often.

All week I kept Excel spreadsheets detailing Luke's every move. When he ate, when he slept, when he pooped, etc... Guess what I found? That's right, there's ABSOLUTELY NO PATTERN TO HIS BEHAVIOR WHATSOEVER.

Surprise, surprise, my newborn is acting like a newborn.

I did learn a few things, though, mostly about how I need to try to control his day a little less. I'm the queen of managing my own time down to the minute if I need to, and in college my friends used to tease me for being rigid about following my strategically planned day as outlined in my day planner. Life would clearly end if I took longer than 12 minutes to walk from my dorm to the student union back then. Now I need to realize that babies (and older kids) do things on their own time, and it's okay to relax a bit about the "schedule" and follow his lead on what to do and when to do it.