The first week: Day 2

Today's mission: Do some grocery shopping with baby.

Mission accomplished? Yes! We went to the Sobey's near home, a jaunt that would have been a five-minute walk in my past life. Now it's like being a roadie for a stadium band: stroller, car carrier, diaper bag and babygirl, all packed away in the SUV and hauled an embarrassingly short distance before being unloaded and carted around the store along with my purchases. But hey, dinner's in the bag for the whole week! Nothing elegant, but decent enough for a first-week effort. I will have to start digging around in the recipe books, though; I've become aware that my cooking repertoire is limited to say the least, and I intend to improve it over the next few months.

Compliments elicited: Two, both from women of a certain age. Also got a couple of odd stares from younger guys, perhaps looking at the kid perched atop my shopping cart and wondering where they were selling babies.

Things learned: Spare time is like air to a swimmer doing laps underwater. You have to take full advantage when you get a "breather." I had hoped to reorganize the pantry today; I got as far as putting all the boxes of baby cereal together and shuffling around some bags of chips left over from Christmas. My big mistake was thinking I could blow the first half-hour of nap time on reading a magazine. As it turned out, the first half-hour of nap time was the first three-quarters of nap time.