What a year

It was one year ago today I had the positive home pregnancy test. What a short year! And they're only going to get shorter, I am sure. The past four months have flown by. The weekdays have their own quick schedule - wake up at 4:15 so that I have time to feed Emerson a few times, watch some news, and get us both ready for our days, then drop her off at daycare, then stay at work for nine hours, and then come home to either Rod and Emerson or have a few minutes to get laundry together or do some general picking up of crap around the kitchen and living room before Rod gets home with Emerson.

We only have about 2 1/2 hours to do our actually living every day before it is time to get ready for bed. In this time, I need to feed Emerson once or twice and eat a quick dinner myself. I also want to play with Emerson and read to her. I want to watch news and maybe an episode of some TV show. I want to cross stitch. I want to read. I want to blog. I want to email friends. I want to download photos from my camera. I want to refresh my programming skills and learn some more stuff. But 2 1/2 hours a day is clearly not enough time to do everything.

Spending time with Emerson is my highest priority of course. I want her to grow up feeling loved, wanted, and knowing that I think that she can do anything. I want to model good behavior for her. I want her to see people eating healthy food, exercising, and enjoying nature. I want her to see that her dad is capable of cooking and cleaning and that her mom is capable of basic home and vehicle maintenance. I want her to see people being polite to wait staff at restaurants and those working the register at the grocery store. I want her to see people behaving responsibly with money. I want her to see people not judging other people who look and act differently than we do. I want her to value learning.

There are so many values that I want to transmit to her that there are just not enough hours in the day for it. But if I don't teach them to her, she'll learn more from people who AREN'T me. The world is full of stereotypes in magazine and TV ads plus just the general population who thinks that being a girl means owning everything in pink and being spoiled.

I'm going to do all that I can in the 2 1/2 hours a day I have. Beyond that, I'll just have to trust that my genetic relationship to her is strong enough to counter any negative influences that come up elsewhere.