Upside Down

Oh yes, it's all coming back to me.  We have a blog.  I keep forgetting about this.

Today something crazy happened.  Kenny went to work--at like an office, wearing business casual and sitting in cubicle all day.  He interviewed for a contracting position on Monday.  Later that day we met with a potential child care provider.  The next day they offered him the gig, and today we all had a really weird day.

Kenny dropped Eli and me off at the sitter's house and I dropped Eli off (then proceeded to spend an hour and 40 minutes in the car...oops).  He saw that I was leaving and began screaming and crying--which, while not terribly uncommon--felt way worse since I was leaving him with basically a stranger rather than his father or grandparent.  Intellectually, I know this is good for all of us.  Emotionally I am still catching up, which surprises me.  I didn't expect to feel this way.

Eli did apparently stop crying after a couple of minutes, so that is good news.  His sitter (not even sure that is the right word) seems really great and did a million activities with him.

Starting tomorrow, Kenny will get up at the crack of dawn, walk the dogs and then drive an hour to work.  I will somehow get Eli fed and dressed, myself dressed, the dogs mini-walked, Eli and me on the train and to the sitter, then myself back on the train and to work.  I'm not really sure how that all will happen.

Baby Junkie

I’m officially back at work full time. I’d say the major flaw with my workplace is that there are no babies in it. Namely, there are no Eli babies in it. I’ve found myself grasping for every Eli moment I can get outside of work. The moment 5:00 hits, I am out the door, walking quickly to the train, running to not miss a train, and then riding impatiently and counting down the stops. I get very angry if there is a train delay as it’s robbing me of baby minutes. When I get off the train I look from the platform to see if I can see Kenny, puppy and babies waiting. I speed walk to them and remove Eli from the Bjorn. He’s been falling asleep around 7:00, so I do not get much awake time with him. I’m pretty much glued to him until I wake up in the morning and talk myself into leaving him to go shower. I try to get ready as quickly as possible so that I can get him back before I leave. Then I carry him to the train and reluctantly hand him over to Kenny and the pups when we get to the station.

At work, I sit at a desk plastered in pictures of him. I wait impatiently for the Daily Eli and sometimes request additional pictures. I also call two to three times. I count down the days to the weekend. I am no help around the house. If I’m home, I want baby in my arms. I just can’t get enough.

Six things

1. I am back at work half time mostly from home--but I have to go into the office one day a week. I went in for the first full day last Wednesday. Let's just say I have one more thing to add to the very short list of things that can make me cry.

2. Pumping at work is no picnic. Until I figure out a better system, I currently have to go get a key for the storage room, sit on the floor next to the door in the storage room, assemble the various parts of the pump, look at a picture of Eli and pump for 15 minutes, disassemble the pump, get dressed, return the key, put the milk in the fridge and remember what I was doing before I dropped everything. I do this three times a day.

3. We went to St. Louis this weekend. We can add 5-hour car rides to the very long list of things that can make Eli cry.

4. It's not so hard to fit 2 puppies, 2 adults, and a baby in the car after all.

5. We saw three other babies while we were at my in-laws' house this weekend. Turns out we have a fussy baby. We had no idea until we saw how chill the other babies were. Who knew? He sure is cute though.

6. Baby runs hot like his Daddy. He got overheated three times this weekend and had to be stripped down and covered in wet wash rags.

7. It might be easier to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes if I could stop eating cake. I made a very yummy cake though.

Workplace hyjinx

So, last Friday I was a bit bummed. I had to wear a suit (or what I classify as close-enough-to-a-suit-I’m-too-big-for-real-clothes) instead of the usual jeans casual. I had a client meeting scheduled for 4:00 and client meetings=you have to dress up. My boss told me that our receptionist would call when the client got there and asked me to print off a bunch of stuff for the meeting in the meantime. I walked down to the meeting with her, past what I did not realize at the time were all empty desks. When we got to the room I thought it odd that the door was shut.Seemed kind of rude to have our client all shut up in the room by himself. I opened the door and was greeted by my entire office shouting “surprise,” a clothesline full of onesies, and a table full of cupcakes and falafel (from my favorite falafel place). Oh, and a Kenny. The Kenny part really threw me off much as Megan’s appearance at my birthday last year threw me off. I have a hard time with people being in the wrong context. I said, “you’re not supposed to be here” and kept asking him why/how he was. There was a flipchart full of boy names since my coworkers all know that yes, we have girl names figured out but can’t agree on a single boy name. They came up with many winners including Moonshine and “The Situation.” We had sparkling cider (or champagne if you happened to not be pregnant). I thought the onesies on the clothesline were my present and was surprised when they handed me a big gift bag full of baby bathing paraphernalia and a Babies R Us gift card. I introduced Kenny to each and every one of my coworkers. I think it’s good for him to have a face to go with the names he hears about all the time. Overall, I would describe the experience as awesome.

In related news, I am now over 37 weeks pregnant. That means the baby is full term (though the due date is not until Mardi Gras) and is basically just freeloading and trying to get fatter right now. At my midwife appointment last night I found out I had gained a centimeter and lost and pound in the last week. My scientific explanation for this is that the baby is eating my fat. To be on the safe side, I have been eating pretty much non-stop today. I’ve had a bagel, bowl of oatmeal, protein bar, manicotti, and a Hershey kiss so far today—and we’re really just 6 or 7 hours into the day. None of the pictures this week were good, so you get this one:

We finished most of our household projects this last weekend. It’s as if we’re finally ready for that housewarming party we were going to have. Also, you just really can’t have a baby when there are pictures that need to be hung. I mean, I’m sure you can try. I just know it’s a bad idea. We are officially allowed to have the baby after we make and hang our headboard this weekend and get onsite recycling set up. Below is a picture of Kenny’s masterpiece. I talked him out of making himself crazy and trying to hang them in straight lines. The idea is that we try to have at least one picture of all of our family members and friends. This is how baby will remember who each of you are.

I break dresses

All the fun was indeed had last weekend, but I’ve been trapped under something heavy all week and unable to tell you about it. Yesterday was the last of day of our giant 3-day all member annual conference. Our wonderful bosses gave us today off, which is great because I need today to clean the house and get ready for our trip to Seattle. We leave tomorrow morning and some friends come to stay with the puppies. In other words, I will also fail to tell you about last weekend today.

Because of the conference I had the challenge of dressing in business dress for three days. I do not own 3 suits that can fit around the belly, so I had to get a bit creative. For two of the days I ended up wearing two non-maternity dresses that happened to have belly space. Everything was going swimmingly until the third day. I was sitting in a session and the, um, upper part of the dress (actually it was a jumper) was a bit snug and inhibiting my breathing. I was at the back of the room so I decided I could unzip my breath and have a little reprieve. The session was ending so I went to zip back up. I couldn’t reach so asked my friend/coworker, Lisa, for help. The zipper got stuck. She tried for a few minutes with no success. Another coworker suggested that standing up might help. Meanwhile, around 400 members are sitting in the rows in front of us learning about investment risk. Standing up did not help. A managing director saw what was happening, and he came over to help as well. Zipper. Would. Not. Budge. Lisa and others tried to convince me that it looked like a style feature of the dress. I went to the bathroom to survey the damage. From far away it did conceivably look like an intentional feature. Really though, it looked like I was walking around with my dress unzipped. I took the jumper off completely to see if I could fix it. Nope. Zipper looked tired and angry I had forced it to close earlier.

I ended up borrowing a suit jacket from a coworker to hide for the rest of the day. When I got home I handed the jumper to Kenny who promptly zipped it up in about 15 seconds.

And now, the poor belly, pictured here at 23 weeks trapped under two layers of spandex. Not its best look. I blame Kenny's photography.