thanks

You all are pretty darn amazing. Thanks for checking in, emailing, and joke telling. I'm not going to lie...the day pretty much sucked but I made it through in one piece. There were a few highlights though:

- Mr H telling me when I got home that "she's a lot of work". Nice for him to finally realize that!
- my boss approaching me about starting a Virginia branch of our outreach division with me leading it up. Best part about this...it is a work from home position. We'd still need some type of part-time childcare for times I am with families or clients, but Sweetness could be home with me probably 3 days a week. How awesome would that be! It all probably wouldn't get put into motion until the new school year starts in July but it sure would be easier to get up and leave her every day knowing it was short term.

The negatives:

- Sweetness barely slept at all and apparently screamed bloody murder for large chunks of the day. Even her new-found blankie (this was the best accidental discovery ever) couldn't console her.

- While we're lucky she will take a bottle, she pretty much will only take the edge off her hunger with it. Yesterday morning she only ate 2.5 oz. And then for the afternoon...well apparently she will only submit herself to the indignity of a bottle once per day. She wouldn't touch the thing. So she was one hungry girl by the time I got home. I think I spent most of the evening nursing. Today she chowed down and finished a full bottle so hopefully this was a short-lived protest.

oh...another good thing. She had her best sleep ever last night!! Went down around 7:45, woke up at 1:30 to eat and then went right back down until 6:30. Now if only I hadn't had crazy insomnia from 1:30-4 I might feel a little bit rested!

and one more negative...I have now worn the only 2 pairs of non-jeans I have that fit. Not sure what to do about tomorrow?

I feel like I should end on a positive so here's another thanks to all of you. It made me feel so much better every time a new comment showed up in my inbox.

oh...and this is the last thing I promise. Please go over and vote for Mel. We all know how freakin awesome she is...let's make sure the rest of the world knows it too!!

Operation Fill My Inbox

The alarm is set, clothes laid out for tomorrow, bag packed. And yes, tears shed. Just mine so far but tomorrow I know she's going to cry and wonder why I'm not for her.

So to stop me from sobbing all day at work, please fill my inbox with smiles, stories, etc. This way everytime I get a spare minute to check my email, I'll see comments from you all and hopefully not spend the entire day being miserable.

Thanks ladies~you rock!

This is a test

This is only a test.

Except on Monday it's all real. I decided to be a good worker bee and go in for a bit today. Clean out my inbox, read all the changes to plans that have happened since September, review staffing, etc so I can hit the ground running on Monday. I also thought it would be a good idea to see how long it takes me to get out of the house. And apparently the answer to that is longer than I thought!

I knew my office was used for a variety of different things while I was gone. Space is at a premium in a school and there was no way the space would be wasted. I got an email from some people the last day before the break saying that were setting everything back up for me. I guess to them that meant throwing all the furniture in the room and the laptop on the desk. I was so pissed this morning. The laptop was missing cords so I had to rummage through other people's offices to find them. Then I log on and realize it isn't even my laptop. Everything that was saved to the desktop is gone (yes I know, I shouldn't save there anyway) but most importantly, all of my pictures were gone. I need those! And then email on that laptop wasn't working so I ended up in the computer lab. Funny how punishing it can be to try to work over a break. That's what I get for trying to be good ;)

So I've been here an hour and haven't really cried or gotten too sad. I guess being pissed is a good strategy. This morning was hard though. Not only did she have a horrible night's sleep (woke up 9 times over 10 hours, you do the math...there's no long chunk in there), but she also really didn't eat this morning. And now I can't help but think she's going to feel so abandoned this morning. I've been good and haven't called Mr H to check in or anything. It's not that I don't trust him, he just gets frustrated so much faster than me. And Sweetness really picks up on that and won't calm down for him. I guess he'll just have to learn...

Expect a whiny self-indulgent post from me Sunday night or Monday morning. To top it all off, f.acebook is blocked at work! That has been my lifeline to the real world for the last 4 months, what am I going to do? (probably just blog more often I guess)

My last week

This is my last week of leave. Crazy to think that the new year is here and I'm heading back to work. I know I shouldn't complain, I've had a 17 week leave but since I'm all about me right now I'm going to. On Friday I'm doing a test run, going in for a half day. I need to see what it'll take for me to be able to leave the house in the morning. And I think the half day will be good for Mr H. He seems to think that this is going to be a 6 week vacay for him. I'm just so sad that I won't be able to spend my days with her. She's just getting to be this sweet smiley little ball of love. And unfortunately she's turned into a bit of a momma's girl. There are many times when I've been the only one who can calm her down. That does not bode well for the next few weeks. I know she'll get over it and I'm not egotistical enough to think that I am in the only one who can care for her, but I am going to miss her like crazy. I really just like her, she's fun.

Although my sweet little lovebug seems to think that we are here for her constant amusement 24/7. She used to be the best sleeper at night, going down around 10, waking up to eat at 4, then back up around 7:30. Then about 2 weeks ago she started getting crazy fussy in the evening and I read that she probably needs an earlier bedtime. Well since we've done that she typically sleeps in 90 minute chunks and when we go in, she's all smiles and laughing. So starting yesterday there's no picking up and cuddling at night, just sticking the pacifier back in without eye contact. It feels so cruel but we all need to get some sleep!

Sweetness has had an exciting month. I took her down to Fl for my grandpa's 93rd birthday. She did AMAZING on the flight. I was nervous flying with her by myself but thankfully there are still nice, helpful people in the world. And to anyone who is flying soon, J.etblue has changing table in the bathrooms, apparently they are one of the few that do. I wasn't planning on changing her diaper on the short flight but Sweetness didn't read that memo. I think the whole plane wanted me to change that!

I hope everyone had a nice holiday. Mine was weird. On one hand, it was 1000 times better than last Christmas. Then I was praying that the IUI worked...and now I held the result in my arms throughout Christmas dinner. But my family still was incomplete. The holidays were so weird without my dad. Calling him on Christmas day to check in was just bizarre. And my mom has had just a horrible time. So guess the moral is something along the lines of the grass is always greener. I thought I would have everything I could possibly want but there was still a hole. (admittedly not as big as last year but a hole nonetheless)

Best wishes to everyone for 2009. I hope it brings you all the happiness in the world!

Save the toys

One of my favorite things is looking at homemade toys at craft fairs and once everything came out about the lead paint and the chemicals in so many plastic toys, I started buying them for my nieces. I was a little sad when I read this. While I totally support making toys safer, I had not thought of the un-intended consequences of these laws.

As an aside, what a great weekend! On Saturday, I baked for our annual TOOTPU cookie exchange, we decorated the tree, and made a nice dinner. Then Sunday was just fantastic! I had so much fun with all the DC blog ladies, catching up and meeting some of the new people there. Then I went over to my mom's and we decorated her tree and ate all of the cookies for dessert. The fam was quite impressed with everyone's cooking talents!

Jump start my...

heart...guess again. My car...nope, give up?? My uterus silly. Funny how it is still the topic of dinner conversations. Last weekend I mentioned my continued love of my RE since he called to congratulate us and see how things were going. My mom asked last week if having Sweetness "jumpstarted" everything so that we wouldn't need to go back if we wanted to have another child. (of course she did not say if we wanted to have another as she is already talking about Sweetness' little brother or sister but that is a story for a whole other post)

Back to my girly parts being discussed over beef stew. I've been going the education route more and more these days and talked about how we had unexplained infertility so there is no reason to think that anything would be different should we decide to have another biological child. Not to mention that the jumpstarting urban legend completely leaves out the fact that men play a role in the whole conception thing too. Me being pregnant did nothing to change Mr H's curly-q sperm. I don't think she really heard me but at least I said my peace. Which, for me, is a big change from last year. My tongue was permanently bleeding from biting it. Hopefully the more I challenge all the myths, they'll start to fall by the wayside. Wishful thinking I know but if a girl can't dream during the holidays...when can she??

Anyone out there?

I'm determined to get back into blogging, if there is anyone out there reading. I've been reading and following everyone and promise to get back to being a good commentor too.

To recap the last 3 months:


- breastfeeding--has gone from horrible to good to ok to ouch to not too bad to....It really is a rollercoaster and is NOTHING like what I thought. I pictured a warm light coming in the window as I smiled down at my peaceful little baby nursing. HA!! She still screams her way through her evening feedings. The neighbors probably think we're torturing her. We've been to the doctor and ruled out reflux and colic and all those things. She just doesn't want to eat between the hours of 5 and 10. But she's putting on the pounds so I'm not supposed to worry

- sleeping--not to jinx anything but the girl is practically a narcoleptic. Soooo lucky on that front. We're working on getting her into her own room since she's still in the pack n play in our room.

- me--where to even start. I've had a definite case of the baby blues. I had a really hard time in early November, thinking back to all of the crap going on last November. And then of course I felt guilty for being upset. Pretty much every day I check and see what was going on this time last year. It's crazy, I thought I had moved on from all of this crap but clearly I didn't. On top of that, my mom is having a horrible time right now with the holidays. All sorts of family crap is going on. And I'm in the middle of deciding if I should go back to work or not. Nothing is ever easy I guess.

gotta run---shortlived little nap