adhd has prepared me well for motherhood, I'm already very used to drinking cold tea

this involved quite a lot of us peering over the side of the cot looking at each other like ????? as baby half opened her eyes, cried, closed them again within a few seconds... as newborn parents if we hadn't had that advice we would have jumped in many times when she was asleep

we basically absorbed one piece of great advice from everything we had recommended to us about baby sleep which is "babies are loud in their sleep, don't pick up the baby unless you're 100% sure they're awake" which we followed since the day she was born

I'm aware things will all get worse again at 4 months and I should enjoy this while they last

this is after 2 nights of sleeping through with no night feed as well so I'm just like... *how* is this all working so well

holy **** the bedtime routine just *worked*…? we tried to get baby into a routine ~1w ago - nappy change, whiten noise on, sleeping bag, give the dummy, turn the big lights out and sing a lullaby (once sung & then hummed). today by the second time hummed she was asleep, no fuss

just something about the vibe on Instagram is... I guess not authentic enough (or maybe just not autistic enough) for me. or maybe it's that the algorithm there respects niches less so I'm not hitting my target audience so easily

so after 2 months of x-posting everything from tiktok to youtube and insta reels I'm giving up on the latter - the vibe is too different I'm finding it too much mental friction to even come up with the captions. it makes sense - I gel better with the platforms I actually use

truly the best time to start poasting was 4 years ago or rather, 4 years ago the best time to start poasting was today

we are singing *so much* around the house to the baby, this is now a Household That Sings and I love it

I do love and appreciate all 7 subscribers on my from-scratch YouTube account though 💖

wild how much difference not starting from zero is. even an inactive for 2 years 100 shorts tiktok account gives me so much more reach and interactions. plus all the muscle memory from having done it before - the lack of anxiety compared from starting from scratch is crazy

adhd hobby hopping feels a lot less cursed when you reliably hop *back* to old hobbies, even ones from years ago - but this is only possible if you maintain good relationships with past and future you. sometimes we have adhd-burned bridges with ourselves that need mending first

I will still play chess, but like, sleep-deprived bullet with no aspirations of quality

also crossposting to youtube shorts (clarityscape) and insta reels (qing.clarityscape) if those platforms are more your speed

new mum brain fog means chess improvement is totally not a realistic aspiration right now - so I've hobby-hopped back to short videos. back on tiktok, now making "mum content" (cringe 😅 but it's where my head is at)

the lines are touching again because unlike other people, I don't end up blundering much less in blitz than bullet 😬

current status - lichess 1800

at the tragic standard of bullet chess where people usually have really good ideas but inevitably in every game *one* of you will blunder so it's just a game of normal looking chess until somebody somewhere in the world exclaims "F***!" at their screen

I did it! 1700 to 1800 was a reeeeeal slog, the start of year backslide was pretty painful, but got there in the end