The Best Laid Plans

Posted on Mon May 11th, 2020 @ 10:37am by Ensign Nhallia Newmark

598 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Food for the Gods
Location: Newmark Family Quarters
Timeline: After Baby Blues

ON:

Nhallia settled back into the comfortable chair in the living room with a heavy sigh. She had no idea what was going tonight- Verdeth had never acted so- so- She wasn’t even sure how to describe it. He’d never walked out in the middle of something. He’d never tried to boss her around, never thrown his weight around or summoned her best friends out of the blue as if they didn’t have lives of their own and could be expected to drop everything and coming running at his whim. And in the months since Aurea was born, he’d never just pushed the baby at her and turned away.

It must have been something at work, she decided. She didn’t know what. Maybe he was upset about being pushed back down to Assistant Chief again? He’d taken on the Acting Chief role many times in his career, and he always said he was little relieved when he got a new Chief in- he said he preferred less stress, more family time, and fewer responsibilities- but maybe it had stung a little this time. He wasn’t getting any younger, and maybe he had started to consider his career in a different light?

Nhallia had mulled these things aloud to Aurea as she gave the baby her bath. Then she’d fed and burped her, then rocked her to sleep and laid her in her crib.

Now she decided she couldn’t understand what was going on so long as Verdeth decided he was going to keep secrets from her. She would have to talk to him about it. She wouldjust have to remember to do that.

But for now, she had a cup of herbal tea and a stack of PADDs with articles she’d found and wanted to read in greater detail. She’d been meaning to get to them for days, but had never had time to read them. Since she was too wound up to sleep, she started with the top of the stack.

First up- an article comparing the importance of routine and predictability in an infant’s life vs babies who never seemed to develop a pattern and whether or not a routine should be imposed onto an infant who just didn’t seem to follow a steady sleep/wake cycle. Results seemed to be mixed.

Next was going to be an entire collection of studies on the benefits of early bilingual living for babies and whether or not sign language bestowed all those benefits as well, even on a hearing baby.

Further down in the stack there was an analysis of the benefits and disadvantages of the rather inaccurately named “baby led weaning”. At first glance Nhallia had rolled her eyes at the concept, but as she’d learned more about it she could see the appeal and now she was about to become a devoted follower of the technique, if she could fine tune her understanding of the requirements….

She was only halfway through the second PADD of bilingual articles though when her eyes drifted closed and she slid into dreamland, where all sorts of good intentions (like asking her husband how work was and what was bothering him so much) got pushed down to the bottom of the list of things she was worried about. If it wasn’t in her stack of PADDs to read…. it just slipped away into the ether of all good intentions that never materialized, even for good people who only meant the best…

OFF:

Ensign Nhallia Newmark

 

RSS Feed