Sometimes I Miss It

I love being a SAHM. I do! But lately, I kinda miss going to work outside of the home. I miss using my brain for things other than parenting. I miss going to the office. I miss eating my lunch at my desk as I work. I miss chatting with my fellow coworkers.

Does all of this missin' mean that we're going to put Malcolm in daycare and I'm going to go back to work? Not at all! It may mean that I may try and find some part-time work that I can do from home if such a thing exists. There are plenty of SAHPs that work from home by making stuff like cloth diapers and stuff. That's not me. I considered trying to get into the eBay thing, but I just wasn't feeling it. I have friends who are freelance editors, graphic designers and web developers who work from home, but I am none of those. I've pondered going into bookkeeping but I don't think I'd like doing that for very long.

Maybe this missin' thing will pass soon. Or, maybe I'll find something to do with Mal that isn't about making money (or spending it, for that matter).

A spare moment for a quick update

Mal's appointment with his new pediatrician went great. He has no concern with Mal's weight because it's consistently on the same curve. He said that the little guy is exactly where he needs to be in regards to his development and remarked on how strong and vocal he is. Good things! He's currently 11 pounds, 13.6 ounces and 24 1/2 inches tall. I really like his new doctor. He actually took time to explain the vaccines to me and why each one might have side effects.

The company I've been doing the contract work for wants me to do even more stuff for them on a longer-term basis. Horray! Unfortunately, I can't work as many hours as they would like, so I hope it works out. It helps when you have friends in high places.

Whew!

I've been reluctant to post anything until it was finalized: Tony got a job! Here's the story: he had a phone interview and in-person interview for a Quality Assurance Analyst position at Classmates.com before the Thanksgiving holiday. That Wednesday, they told him they would be offering him the job and sending him the official offer on Monday. Our friends, Cathy and Eric, both work at the company and worked hard at getting him the interview and had a big influence on the hiring manager's decision. Tony hasn't done QA in about 7 years, so his experience is rusty.

He also had a phone interview the Wednesday before the holiday with a small, Microsoft-owned company doing PHP & MySQL Web Development which is what he's been going for this whole time. The phone interview went better than he expected because he honestly didn't believe he was fully qualified for the position. His face-to-face interview with the company was this past Monday. He was upfront with them from the beginning regarding the job offer with Classmates. The interview went really well and they presented him with a job offer on Tuesday morning.

Imagine that - after 3.5 months of job hunting, he gets two job offers. He accepted the Web Development job and started on Friday. The compensation is what he was looking for and the location is just a 15 minute bus ride from our house so we won't need to get a second car. The Classmates job was south of the city and would have been an hour and a half bus ride each way. His first day went really well; he's very excited about the work environment and says that all of the people that work there seem to work together well.

We can now breathe a sigh of relief.

My final was more challenging than expected, but it's done. Malcolm is doing really great - I haven't been taking as many pictures lately. Shame on me! He has his 4-month well-baby appointment next Wednesday. I'm anxious to see how his weight gain has been. He's still a lanky tike, but he does have more pudge and is definitely growing in length.

We might get snow in the city this weekend and the local ski resorts have started opening. It's killing me a bit because I am DYING to go snowboarding but have no clue how to do so while breastfeeding.

SAHM

I never thought I would become a stay-at-home-mom. I never thought that we could afford it. It's funny how you prioritize your life differently once you have a child. My main focus in life is my family. The biggest decision I have to make everyday is whether the weather is good enough to take Malcolm on a walk. There are very few 'new' events that occur, but I don't mind one bit. My biggest concern in my life is the well-being of our child.

Tony has 2 interviews next week for jobs that sound pretty exciting. WaMu is deciding if they want to have second interviews or if they are just going to make an offer which tells us that they are having a hard time deciding between Tony and another candidate. Things are definitely looking up on the job front!

My milk production is definitely up so let's hope Mal's weight is also. Since we've started the whole formula, Lactaid, fennel and Fenugreek regime, he's been spitting up often throughout the day. If he's gained enough weight to satisfy his pediatrician, the formula is the first thing to go. Tony has been really enjoying feeding him daily, so I'm going to start finding time to pump throughout the day so he can continue to do so with bottled breastmilk in the evenings. It's going to be so weird not having him around all the time. I've gotten quite accustomed to him helping me out during the day. Although it's been a little scary with him being unemployed the last couple of months and us not knowing where our income will be coming from after my severance pay runs out, it's been quite wonderful for all of us that he's been able to spend so much time with Malcolm. They really do adore each other.

7 weeks (and a few days)

Why don't babies blink? Mal is in his swing just staring away at the red button on the side of it and not blinking at all. Do their little eyes not dry out?

Poor little guy got painful diaper rash earlier this week due to me drinking orange juice. It's an adventure figuring out what foods I eat affect him.

I went to my first class last night for Management of IT and was gone for 3.5 hours. I had only pumped enough milk for one bottle and Mal drank that quickly shortly after I left. Tony didn't know where the formula was for back up so when he got hungry again, Tony gave him water with sugar in it. I'm still not really sure why he put sugar in the water, but it made for one bouncy boy! Fortunately, it only kept him up about an hour later than his usual bedtime. My class was kinda boring. I really hope it gets more interesting. Maybe it bored me because it reminded me of work and I don't really want to think about work right now since they laid me off this week. Yes, a week before I was to return. And that's all I'm going to say on the internet. If you want more details, email or call me.

Now I just need to let it go

It has been one of *those* weeks at work. To end a kinda intense week, the power in our office went out today at around 9:30 AM...from the use of space heaters. Yes, I said space heaters. In the middle of summer. Ever since our air conditioner got fixed, it gets really cold in the office when it's cloudy outside. We have no control over our thermostat so people were running space heaters today and it blew one of the fuses in the building. Due to rational that I can't explain, building management didn't bother getting an electrician out to fix it until 1 PM this afternoon. I let our staff go home around noon since we didn't know when the electrician was going to arrive or how long it was going to take to fix. Once the power was restored, Andrew turned the servers back on and went ahead and went home. I stuck around to assist in tracking down a bookkeeping issue. Our office is kinda creepy when you are there by yourself.

It's just become really intense for me because I want to make sure that my staff is as prepared as possible for when I am gone for 2 months. However, I really haven't had the time to focus on making sure everything is in order so it's stressing me out a bit. And, there are other things that are going on that I can't really share on the internet.

Did you come here to read about my complaining? I didn't think so. I'll shut up now.

The Final Countdown

Business Calculus: done and passed! I got 100% on my take home final and an embarrassing score on my in-class exam. I left the exam not knowing if I scored high enough to pass the class, but I did. My overall grade in the class was a solid B. I have come to the conclusion that I just test terribly when it comes to math. Now it's on to Accounting, Finance and Economic classes. I'm hoping that my brain stores this knowledge differently so it will not blank out during test time.

This weekend, I focus on my final project for Business Ethics. I have until Friday to complete it, but really would like to finish it ASAP. It would be awesome if I could get it done this weekend so then I can be D-O-N-E after my last class Monday night. I am so ready to start focusing on nesting and getting ready for the baby. Although it's late spring, I am ready to delve into spring cleaning.

The heat wave we've been experiencing here is almost over. It has been making the office miserably hot and my guess is that it will cost the building owner a big chunk of money to properly fixed it. We'll keep on bugging him until the environment is comfortable to work in. I just do not feel right asking our employees to work in such terrible conditions. The weather is meant to be cloudy and in the mid 60's next week, so no suffering then. I typically do not wear tank tops to work, but did all last week. The heat was just too much. I also haven't been sleeping as well as I would like. I don't know if it's the heat, hormones or stress.

Damn. The prenatal yoga class I was planning on taking today was cancelled. Good thing the one tomorrow was not. I'm going to be diligent about attending yoga in these last couple of months because I've heard it really helps with labor. I've started reading up on HypnoBirthing...very interesting. I'm hoping to pick the brains of Rachel and Angie to see what methods they used to make their natural births successful.

What's been keeping me so busy as of late

Let's see...the company I work for moved our offices to Seattle. This time around, I had lots of help since we have many more employees. On the 17th, we packed all day and then the movers moved our stuff on the 18th. The 19th was spent setting up the office. There were hitches and snags with the move, but they are worked out now. Our new office location is 3 miles from our house and only a block away from Seattle University. It's awesome. The not awesome part: it's an old building with terrible windows. With our lovely spring weather, the office is unbearably hot and we have no control over the air conditioner. While we were negotiating the lease on the space, we put in the requirements that the HVAC system be thoroughly checked out for issues and these issues need to be resolved (we'd been dealing with HVAC issues at our old location for 2 years). They told us it was done and now we find out that it was not. I know how to resolve the issue: new windows. Seriously. Now that we're in the city and do not have designated parking, I also get to hear complaints regarding parking. I had a good guess that it would be an issue. However, the number of employees who have to drive to work has been greatly minimized including T & me.

Now that the move is over, my amount of work feels like it's becoming more manageable. It's been a hectic month.

There are only a couple more weeks left of school for this quarter. This past Monday, I had a group presentation for my Ethics class and it went really well. We actually had fellow classmates complimenting us after it was over! I've been putting a lot of focus on the project so now that it's complete, I can now turn to Calculus. My in-class final is this Wednesday and I need to have my take-home final done before then. Guess what I'll be doing with my 3-day weekend? The nice thing is that because I do have a 3-day weekend, I can actually have a bit of downtime in the mix.

Lil' bean's been doing somersaults in my belly. It's the weirdest thing to watch. I had a doctor's appointment this past Tuesday to get the blood sugar test done. I'm not diabetic, but I am anemic. I have to admit, my diet has gotten poor (for me) since school started. I'm looking forward to having time to cook again this summer. I also dropped a couple of pounds since my last appointment to which Dr. McDermott says, "What is up with your weight?" The baby is continuing to grow, so she's not too concerned about it. However, I'm a little tired of people commenting on how small I am. I got a chiro adjustment yesterday and my regular doctor is out of town. The one who is filling in for her couldn't get over my size. Her sister is also pregnant and is about as far along as I am, so naturally she compares me to her sister. I just wish I had some sort of response when people make that comment.

I swear I eat. I feel like I'm eating all time time. I've increased my calorie intake. I'm trying! My body is going to manage this pregnancy in the way that it knows how. Speaking of eating, I'm hungry so I must go stuff my face before doing productive stuff today.

It's been one of those weeks

Whew! Work has been exciting but not in a good way. It's been keeping me awake at night thinking about it. Nothing devestating, but one thing after another keeps happening.

I brought the banana bread into work and it was a huge hit. I highly recommend the recipe.

I'm finding the movement of lil' bean to be very comforting. I still don't feel like I'm eating enough...I'm always hungry! There is never enough food around. I am one pound away from my prepregnancy weight - I think I'll be back up to 125lbs next week!

Thanks to generous birthday gifts from the parents, I now have a better desk chair for home and will be ordering a deep tissue back massager. I was able to sit at my desk for 3 hours last night without any back pain. Fabulous! From friends, I received lovely bath items for the much needed baths to soothe pregnancy pains that will come in the 3rd trimester. I'm also wearing the new earrings that were also a gift.