Another hiatus

How is it that I could keep up with blogging with a newborn attached to my boob and literally no sleep yet now, with a relatively easy almost 1 11.25 year old and an acceptance that I will never sleep again, I am falling behind? It is because I've stupidly set goals for myself that are hard and annoying to reach.

Now you are waiting to read about how I am starting a business, or running a marathon, or sending food to third world countries and how it's taking up my time. Keep waiting.

Since I'm not the mom who keeps up with a baby book, prints out pictures and dutifully puts them in albums, or spends all my time at Michael's picking out stickers for the scrapbook, I figured the least I could do was make B one single album/book type of thing to sum up his first year. For some reason I feel a lot of pressure that it has to be perfect (like he will care or even look at it more than once or refrain from chewing it to smithereens before he is old enough to have a chance at caring). This is, after all, the one book that will stand to represent the entire first year of the most perfect person ever to grace the planet.

So what do I do when the completely self-imposed pressure is on? Buckle down and work hard? No. I completely avoid the task and spend my time doing other things. I have a friend, let's call her S, who scrupulously monitors her psyche by setting rules. Like "S, we are not allowed to check e-mail until writing three more pages of this paper," or "S, no going out this weekend until completing 2 runs for marathon training." Then she does it and it works! So I decided to try this form of self-management and said "self, no blogging or otherwise pouring any effort into composition until your one meaningful composition, the first-year book, is complete".

"Don't quit now, Mom. Once you start something it's important to see it through to the finish!"

Either the gerbil inside my head (you know the one that runs on the wheel) is more rebellious than S's gerbil or just not as well trained because it said, "Wait a minute! What if you just printed the blog and called it a 1st year book?" I'm already up to month 8 in my original book so I think I'll finish it but I wonder if it is even possible to make something tangible out of this blog for B? Does anyone know of a service that does this for you besides File->Print a million times?

And finally, is it a bad idea to give this to him? I certainly don't censor myself very well. Will he never have children for fear of the torture that is sleep deprivation? Should I give it to him as extra insurance when he's a teenager and I make G have the sex talk with him?