How much time a day are you directly interacting with Annabel, Susan? It's not like you're leaving her in a playpen for 8 hours at a stretch are you?

Today is fairly typical, except that normally I take a shower before she wakes up, but our morning schedule got thrown off because Dylan had an early meeting:

-She woke up around 8:00, and I dressed and fed her. Process took about half an hour.
-I showered and got ready while she played in the exersaucer for another half hour.
-I took her to a meeting with my accountant, so that's about 45 minutes in her carseat and stroller.
-By the time we got home, it was naptime, so I put her in the playpen to play and then fall asleep. She was probably in there 1 1/2 hours, an hour of which was sleep.
-When she woke up, I fed her, put the gates in the living room doors, and put her on the floor for an hour or so. Most of the time she was on her own, though I started out by reading her a story and would occasionally rescue her from things she shouldn't be in.
-The guilt comes in here--she got to a point where she was constantly testing limits by trying to get into forbidden things, and I had a resume that had to be done this afternoon. So I put her back in the playpen for an hour and a half.
-I just fed her her next meal, and as it's naptime again, we're back in the playpen.

Susan, I'm a "true" SAHM with virtually nothing on my plate except for the house and Owen and nothing you've written here seems remotely wrong to me.

I'll put the baby gates up and let Owen crawl the hallway and the nursery while I fold and put away clothes in our bedrooms. I'll leave him in the "baby corral" while I'm around the corner loading the dishwasher and making dinner. I'll put him in the swing for a half an hour while I iron. He'll sit for 40 minutes and watch Noggin without blinking while I check email and post here.

I don't think there are hard numbers out there for exactly how much time babies need your undivided attention. You have to realize that every activity you do with her--from getting her dressed and changing diapers to feeding her are VERY quality individual attention moments. The older she gets, the more she'll need to learn things on her own so there is no time like the present to start.

Is your guilt stemming from stuff you've read and thought "this is the right way to do it"? I think whatever works for you and Annabel is really the "right" way to do things. If she's content with things the way they are, I don't see the need to put yourself through the ringer.

It's a whole complex of guilt, I think. Part of it is that we're living in such a small and difficult to childproof house--even the supposedly childproof living room has things like bookshelves and cabinets we can't let her get into. If we had a house with a truly childproof space, she'd get more time playing on the floor. So I then feel guilty for not having worked harder or managed our money better so we'd be in a bigger place.

So I then feel guilty for

Susan, that is the key, right there. It seems to me that if there is anything, anything at all you can work yourself up into a tizzy of guilt over, you will. You are driving yourself bonkers, and you need to stop it. Stop. worrying.

Harumph. Went to do another henna test, but in the process of boiling the coffee, I boiled it all away.

And I think she's content. Part of the problem is I'm comparing her to my mother's description of my behavior as a baby, and I was pretty precocious on several levels. I walked at ten months, and while Annabel is close, she's not quite there yet, and she'll be eleven months Sunday. I think I also had a few words at her age, and while we think she sometimes says "dada" with intent and calls the stars on the wall everything from "stuh" to "gyar," I'm not sure either really counts, because she doesn't do them reliably enough for me to be sure it isn't random. And I've finally found a question that's more painful than being asked if you have a job yet your senior year in college--it's being asked if your baby has any words yet when she doesn't.

So I then feel guilty for not having worked harder or managed our money better so we'd be in a bigger place.

Well, that's wasted energy. That's not what you have to deal with right now. I don't quite know how to respond because there's no way I could've gotten away with leaving Emmett in a playpen for an hour and half. He'd barely tolerate the exersaucer for fifteen minutes.

One thing we did with our bookshelves which worked, was to pin sheets over the lower shelves. Out of sight, out of mind, for the most part. For my LPs we had very light chains across them, with hooks screwed in at the end of the cases. Stuff like that made a big difference.

Also, we had the very earthquake unsafe inverted-pyramid effect, where things just got moved higher and out of reach. Ultimately the living room was as safe as a playpen.

Even still, Emmett wanted human contact more than to play with toys. So if you can get Annabel to contentedly play with her stuff in there, then I think you're okay. If she's trying to get your attention by testing, then maybe you need to do some resumes after her bedtime.

Susan, that is the key, right there. It seems to me that if there is anything, anything at all you can work yourself up into a tizzy of guilt over, you will. You are driving yourself bonkers, and you need to stop it. Stop. worrying.

Well, I hardly know anyone my age who still rents, and no one trying to raise a baby in this little space. So it makes me feel irresponsible, like we must've fucked up our finances royally.

Well, I hardly know anyone my age who still rents, and no one trying to raise a baby in this little space. So it makes me feel irresponsible, like we must've fucked up our finances royally.

I still rent. I've raised Emmett in a two-bedroom apartment. He's fine. Kids don't need big houses to thrive.

I hardly know anyone my age who still rents

44 years old and have contributed handsomely to my landlord's European vacation habit. I'm not falling for the "we'll give a mortgage to anyone!" scam, because I know what the words "balloon payment" mean.