Make It Work, baby!

The DC area has been hard-hit with snow this Winter. I must admit, I've loved every minute of it. The snow has been absolutely beautiful to watch fall, and it really offers a sense of peace to my busy world (the blizzard we had earlier this week notwithstanding). My favorite part of all the snow? I didn't have to go to work! Staying home with my baby (DH is essential personnel, so he worked all week) has been wonderful. We played together. Took long walks through the snow. Rolled around on the bed and stayed in our PJs all day. Tried new foods and I tried my hand at baking. Danced to music, read books, and rocked ourselves silly. I was supposed to go to work today, but my bus never came. Oh well! So I'm working from home today, but it's not the same. I'm stuck at my computer (clearly working hard - don't judge it's lunch time!), and Adrian is enjoying lunch with his sitter. (One day I'll write a little more about her.) I actually took a shower and go...

My baby is 11 months old today. It's hard to believe that much time has gone by already. He's still not crawling or walking. He's not clapping, saying words, or waving. Sometimes I'm afraid that I've already failed him as a parent. But no. My baby is happy and healthy. He laughs and smiles. Gets frustrated and intrigued. Communicates through facial expression, tone, and posture. Eats like a horse and nurses like a champ. He may be a bit behind all of the milestones, but for now I'm still OK with that. I'm not crying tonight because of my perceived inadequacies as a parent. Instead, I'm remembering where I was 11 months ago. How I felt. There was some joy. There was a lot of love. But it was mostly horror. Pain. Sorrow. Frustration. Helplessness. Failure. "From his mother's womb untimely ripped."  I had a cesarean section. It is really, really hard for me to write about this. Especially in a format that lays bare so many other pe...

Every day I have a roughly half-hour commute to work in the mornings. The afternoons are my chatty Kathy times, but mornings are reserved for reading. Sometimes news, sometimes novels, but today it was poetry. I was fortunate enough to study poetry in college under Pulitzer Prize winning poet Claudia Emerson . Much to my shame, I never took the time to read her award-winning work until now. But I'm so glad I waited. The me of my college years would not have appreciated the depth of feeling with which she writes, especially in the book Late Wife . About her first failed marriage, the time in-between, and her second marriage to a widower, there was a lot that spoke to me. After college, I decided to get married and get a career. A practical one that paid the bills and allowed me to live comfortably. Several of my classmates went on to get their MFAs in creative writing and got to take their skills to the next level, though I don't know if any of them have been (monetarily) su...

T-minus 12 days. Things are stressful at work. My boss is constantly on me about getting certain things done. I wonder if he realizes that he's a big reason I can't get away fast enough. Every ten minutes, he thinks of something else important that I take care of and comes to find out where it is/how it's done/ who here can do it/ etc. I almost (almost) feel sorry for him. But here I am, putzing away on my blog instead of working on the laundry list of "Crap to Finish." I wonder what that says about me?

I finally did it. After over a year of agonizing over the decision to look for work elsewhere, and just two months after actually starting to search, I landed myself a new job! My husband keeps asking me if I'm scared. How do I put this? I'm not nervous at all. I feel confident in my ability to do a good job, and to provide this company with exactly what it needs. I'm super excited about all of the possibilities that this position will open up to me. The only thing that really had me quaking in my boots (so-to-speak, since I actually rarely wear boots), was telling my boss. Working in the same place for almost five years is a pretty Big Deal, especially when the company never fires anyone and the only way to stop working there is to retire or die. The jury's still out on the Office Manager, whose tenure there predates my birth by two years. Why are these people so loyal? Why did they expect me to be? Honestly - they are afraid of change and don't know anythi...

So this post really isn't going to be as exciting as the title sounds. My son has stopped drinking bottles during the day. He started drinking less and less, and finally got the point where, if offered a bottle, he would push it away or throw it as hard as he could (and trust me, the kid has a good arm). Much to my chagrin, all of the wonderful mommy milk pumped throughout the day was sitting in the fridge, untouched, and then bagged and passed on to my Milkshare mama and baby. So, not a waste of course, but not exactly what I imagined would be happening with my milk each day, either. This is classic reverse-cycling , and the bane and joy of the working mother's existence. The bane because it means your baby is attached to you from the moment you step into the door until the moment you leave the next morning. Gotta make up for that missed milk somehow! The joy because it means your baby loves YOU more than the bottles and doesn't want your milk any other way. I have se...

I feel strongly about breastfeeding. Prior to giving birth I had no idea how strongly I would feel about it, as I always assumed it was a given. But my first few weeks of crying, pain, and "helpful" relatives simply made me a determined lactivist. Not only that, but I've always been proud of my boobs. They used to be my shining glories. Now they no longer look that great, but they also no longer belong to me. They are unequivocally the property of my baby boy. Of course, I can't bring him to work with me. That's where the pump comes in. I have a Medela Pump-In-Style Advanced . It's cute enough to be inconspicuous (though totally noticable if you know what to look for), has plenty of space to fit my cooler in, and can either plug in or operate from a battery pack. Who knew that it would become my new best friend? I pump twice daily at work. That has become "Me" time. I get to shut my office door so nobody bothers me. I get to chill out at my comput...