Back to reality around the corner

It's been over four months since I've been to my office.  I walked out, or rather waddled out, of the office on August 20th filled with anticipation of the pending birth of my daughter.  A little over two weeks later, she was here and I have loved every moment of getting to be with her all day long over the last 3+ months.  However, our continual time together is almost over as I am about to assume a new title - Working Mother - in less than two weeks. 

When I found out I was pregnant last January, I struggled with deciding what I should do for work when the baby was born.  Not only was I exhausted from being in my first trimester, but also from what CPA's know at "busy season" - the stretch of several months where you basically work seven days a week for long hours under stressful, time constrained conditions.  Sounds great, huh?  I don't really know why we torture ourselves, but we do.  Last year was one of my worst busy seasons I've had since I started working in terms of drama, stress and sheer exhaustion.  Needless to say, the idea of staying at home had its appeal back then.  However, never having had a child before, it was hard for me to predict back in the spring if I would really enjoy being out of the workforce to become a stay at home mom after knowing only the work ritual for seven years.

I enjoy being with other adults and I work with a group of really great people, so I knew I would miss the daily interaction too much.  I know about mommy groups and have been able to participate in various play dates with other moms while on my leave.  While those have been great, I have observed that the conversation topics with stay at home moms tend to be approximately 90% about their children.  I'm definitely not saying there is anything wrong with this and, of course, it makes sense.  But for me, I want something else that I can discuss with Geoff at the dinner table beyond how many poopy diapers Olivia had for the day.  So, after much prayer, I became at peace with the decision to continue working after the baby was born.

I also decided to continue to work at PwC instead of searching for another job with more normalized hours for several reasons: 1) PwC maternity leave is really good.  When I return to work, I will have had 4 1/2 months off, fulling paid for;  and 2) PwC offers me the opportunity for a part time, flexible working schedule outside of busy season, which is not something most other jobs out there can offer me.  So my hope is to only be working three days a week by the beginning of May if not sooner.

As for childcare for Olivia, it has been a point of much frustration over the last few months and I will spare you all the gory details.  The main news is that we have hired a sweet lady named Romelia to be our nanny.  I think she will be an excellent caregiver for Olivia.  At the previous family she was employed by, she was the caregiver of a girl from 6 weeks old until she was 3.  From the reports given by both Romelia and the other family, Romelia and the girl became very attached and the little girl was upset when the family had to move overseas and couldn't take Romelia with them.  I hope Olivia is able to form a similar bond with her as well. 

I'll give a blog update in a few weeks regarding the transition.  I know it will be hard and hopefully I won't cry too much! :) 

No wonder she's getting so big!

Olivia @ 3 months

Here are Olivia's three month pictures thanks to our good friends Jonathan and Blakely with Framed by Fletcher (framedbyfletcher.com).  We had so much fun taking them and love how they capture Olivia's sweetness.

What Olivia is up to these days:
- We've heard a few giggles and laughs come out her the past 10 days - so cute!
- In the last week or so, she has discovered her hands and thinks they must taste really good because she loves to gnaw and suck on them.
- She has also discovered her feet and likes to grab on to them and pull them up towards her head.  She hasn't yet connected her toes into her mouth, but she comes pretty close.
- Her grasp is getting much stronger and she is able to clasp things in her hands.  This includes mommy's hair which she got a good grip on last night and didn't want to let go.
- Her sleep at night has regressed some in the last week.  She has been waking up during the night, typically sometime between 1:30 - 3:00 am, before it is time to eat.  She's not hungry, but just needs to be rocked back to sleep.  Hopefully this is a short term issue and we can get it resolved soon.
- She is enjoying the church nursery so far.  The workers there always say how sweet and smiley she is for them.

Date Night

Good news...life as parents is progressing!  Several weeks back, Geoff and I decided it was time for us to get out of the house minus Baby and figured my birthday was a good reason to do it.  We made reservations at a restaurant here in Houston called Mark's.  We had never been there before, but had heard good things about it from friends for a long time. The restaurant is in an old church building, so it has a very romantic and intimate ambience.  Choosing the restaurant and making the reservation was the easy part.  Next came finding a babysitter.  Fortunately, our good friends Jonathan and Blakely had volunteered to babysit whenever we needed them, so we took them up on their offer for the evening. 

Olivia did great with her first babysitters.  I think her parents did pretty good too.  We didn't call or text Jonathan and Blakely to check on her.  Plus, I don't think we really talked about her that much either, which is a good thing.  It almost felt like our pre-baby days except now we have the extra bonus of having a super cute baby and her sweet smiles waiting at home for us.  :)

After our successful first night out, we decided to leave Olivia behind for a more extended period of time while we went to our work Christmas parties this past Saturday.  The parties both happened to fall on the same night, so we were going to double dip.  We didn't want to take up another evening of Jonathan and Blakely's so we needed to find another sitter.  Geoff's running coach had referred a college girl to us as a potential nanny.  After meeting Nora, we weren't ready to hire her as our nanny, but she seemed like she would be a good babysitter.  Saturday had been a very busy day for us and Olivia was a little off her routine, so when Nora got here, Olivia was abnormally fussy and not her usual self.  Not a good start, but we were able to get her calmed down before we left and the evening seemed to be another success.  I think Nora will be a good babysitter for Olivia going forward.

Geoff and I had a great time at our parties.  I enjoyed getting dressed up after spending much of my time these days with spit up or worse on my clothes.  Plus, it was really fun to see a lot of my co-workers I haven't seen in months.  We were gone almost seven hours which is the longest that I've been away from my baby.  It was hard.  I missed her a lot and tried not to worry that she was taking her bottles, going down to sleep, etc.  I kept telling myself that it was good practice for when I go back to work (Only four more weeks....ahhhhh! More on that to come soon in a future post.) and am away from her for much, much longer periods.  I'm sure I will get used to it and it will get easier over time.  At least that's what I'm hoping for anyways.  We'll see....