Now that I am a mother I realize that “free time” is one of the many luxuries people give up when they decide to procreate. I kind of understood this going into the whole parenthood thing, but it’s not something you can TRULY appreciate, like everything else in parenthood, until it drops on your head like a piano shoved out of a window 80 stories high.
Free time is the four minutes it takes Jon to change Leta’s diaper; it’s the one minute I have to use the bathroom after I set her down in the crib; it’s the 30 seconds she will remain calm in the carseat after we return from the grocery store. On the now infrequent occasion that she remains napping for longer than 20 minutes I feel like a teenage boy who has just locked himself in the bathroom with a stack of porn magazines, like OH MY GOD, THE POSSIBILITIES.