I can understand some people being too busy for maintaining one but it's no wonder most people want at least one. My child has become my primary hobby. Sounds pretty miserable, but in hindsight it seems inevitable that this happened.It's not easy to think in terms of how active I still am or how much energy I have for hobbies outside home. For a few months it was so much trouble to get out of the house that I quite started to enjoy staying in. Before I had a child I went out for a social event (I mean PARTY!!!!) once or twice a week, sometimes even more often.
Nothing out of the ordinary really - I didn't drink much and I always went home to sleep. Now I go out to such a party about once a month, or perhaps every couple of weeks. I drink less and I drink only things I know the exact content of. I don't let anyone else mix me a long drink, if I can help it. I've even brought a measuring cup to a party to make sure I don't drink more than planned. In restaurants I ask waitresses exact content of drinks and when people pour me too much wine I don't finish my cup. I've gotten used to it. It used to be a big deal but I don't notice it anymore. Now I don't fret over a glass of wine a few hours before breastfeeding and I'm not upset about not being able to have three or four. Partying as a hobby is still much more on the background and no longer a remarkable part of my weekly plans.While it wasn't so easy to go out partying, I needed to make sure I had some hobbies left. I used to like playing pool but I haven't played since my pregnant tummy really started to get in the way. I also liked to go clubbing but I've only managed to do that a couple of times since I had a child. It's not caused by a difference in mentality - I don't think I should avoid clubbing now that I have a baby at home.
If anything, now I have even more reason to make sure I don't fall back too far in the female vs. female competition. The real reason I don't go clubbing anymore is that I don't have any new clubbing outfits. Besides, 90% of the time I went clubbing, it was mostly just to hang out with one certain friend. Now I rarely see her at all. 
I thought my indoors hobbies would really start taking up more time - for example extreme cross-stitching. HUGE canvas and millimeter-by-millimeter stitches. Think about it for a moment. This means there's 100 stitches per one square centimeter. With a project this big, hands always need to be washed while I stitch and I don't let any staining foods near my cross-stitching canvas. When I have unpacked all my stitching gear it's not easy to put it all aside for a minute to watch over a baby. For this reason I have barely had an opportunity to continue my cross-stitching hobby. Perhaps I'll finish it when I'm old and gray.
I love beginner level web programming but it needs a bit more concentration than I've had the opportunity for so that too has been on pause for the past year. Watching TV is nice but it is horrible for child development to see too much TV or completely wrong movies. For this reason, I'm not very familiar with what's going on there and I rarely even turn it on. Well, I did manage to keep one hobby: watching TV series, except not from TV. Jon Stewart's Daily Show is so much fun that sometimes I feel like I'm more up to date with USA's politics than Estonian.
Perhaps the best hobby that I managed to keep is Xbox games. I was playing the new Prince of Persia when I was waiting to return to the hospital to have a baby and I'm playing the new Prince of Persia now that my baby is learning to walk and talk. The games are completely different. Prince of Persia (2008) was simply so much fun. I recently finished 1000 achievement points there, just to find out it's got a downloadable epilogue!
The main character had some nice dialogue and he was bad looking in a good way. In Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, the main character is an ugly dude with disturbingly British accent. 
Very off-putting. Despite that, I'm on my way to getting all the achievements. I did the toughest one already, now I just have to finish the rest of them. For the loss of so many hobbies, I compensated by getting a new one: cooking! I love hosting dinner parties and I love baking cakes. I'm not too fond of daily cooking because it's so difficult to think what to give Siiri for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner. That's a lot of thinking for each day. After all that, I barely have any creativity left, but it's always refreshing to stumble on something new. It's even better to seek out new recipes and prepare them. Just thinking about it makes me want to browse recipes!
And the rest of my free time I hang out with Siiri and try to keep to her schedule. Five meals and a nap is quite a lot. She sure has gotten smart, though. I still tend to think of her as a baby who barely understands anything but this is certainly starting to change. She's learning new words so fast. She only says a few words, perhaps around 10: mommy, daddy, water, milk, whatisthat (mis? misseeon?), whatchadoing (mis teed?), this, bread etc. She recognizes a lot more words. She can even understand simple questions. One time we were outside she was holding a flower. She pointed, I said "flower", we did this a few times. Then she forgot about the flower and was looking at trees and cars when I asked, "Siiri, where is flower?", so she raised her hand and pointed at the flower in her hand, "this!". Another time we were out playing in a sandbox. It was her very first time. I was telling her about sand and rocks and then asked her where rock is, so she picked up a small rock, placed it on her palm and pointed at it! I was just, you know, making conversation.
I really didn't think she would learn it so fast and I was surprised to see it. It's nearly half past 9 in the morning and Siiri is still asleep. She ate breast milk once in the early morning, as usual, and she could wake up any minute now. She always sleeps this long now, sometimes even until 10. I'm wondering if today will be the day that my primary new hobby gets a new upgrade: will today be the day when Siiri learns to walk? Don't get your hopes up - I've been wondering that for over a month now, but this Monday she stood up without any help from her hands
and yesterday she made two tiny independent steps when she didn't notice.By the way, I had my PhD review and I passed. It was decided I had achieved enough during this year that I can go on the the next year of PhD studies. I also finished another version of the article manuscript and perhaps I'll be less busy now. I took a few days off and spent time with Siiri and it was a lot of fun. This week it's just the two of us because Erkki is in Washington, USA, performing at a huge conference.
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