10 Days Without Writing

It's been awhile since I've posted. Not for any particular reason except that there's not a lot to update on. Although he did a 4.5 hour stretch of sleep a couple weeks ago, I'm thinking that may have been a fluke because it has not been repeated since then. He is consistently sleeping between three and four hours at a time during the nights, but we still get up twice. At least when he gets up we are pretty quick at getting him back to sleep. I can nurse him, change his diaper, and get him to sleep again within about 30 minutes.

We are still breastfeeding and it's going well. He has started to be satiated on just one breast, which is more convenient, but it made me a little nervous at first because I worried he wasn't getting enough to eat. He's turning into quit a chunk. He weighed about 12 pounds this past Wednesday when he was just over 6 weeks old.

He also started to smile over the past week. He has the most precious smile I've ever seen. Some of the time it's crooked and only on half his mouth. Other times he opens his mouth in a big, wide grin. I have some great video of it that I'll post soon.

The biggest challenge I am dealing with is that I return to work in about 5 weeks. I know that I will miss James and it will be a big transition to be away from him for 8 hours each day, but I think that I will get used to it after a week or two. What I am most nervous about is how I can maximize my time with him on the evenings and weekends. I don't want to spend the few hours a day I'll have with him working on laundry, dinner, or cleaning the house. Luckily, we already have a cleaning lady, so that cuts back on some of the "extras" we have to manage.

A few nights ago I got up to feed James and couldn't fall back asleep for three hours. I was worrying so much about squeezing in work, time with James, exercising, cooking, etc. The next evening, Brett and I sat down and made a list of all the different areas of our lives that create work for us. We divided up all the tasks so that he has responsibility for some (picking up the house each night, cooking once a week, dropping off James at day care, making sure Champ is clean and healthy, our laundry, etc.) and I have responsibility for others (planning our menus, cooking once a week, picking James up at day care, baby laundry, groceries, etc.) Just talking through things made me feel much better.

I feel so lucky to have a husband who is supportive of my desire to continue working. Not only will he "let" me keep working, he's also committed to being an equal partner in all the work that remains to be done at home.