Ann vs. Jason

By: Ann

I know I haven’t posted in ages, but my life has been consumed with work and Athena care.  By the time she goes down for bed, I’m usually beat myself.  I’m writing this during my lunch break at work.

This week is my second week back at work.  Things are going as good as they can be at work.  I was missed very much by my MAs due to usual work drama.  Things are basically back to how they should run, now that I’m back…as I’ve been told by my coworkers.

The transition from maternity leave to work has been a little rocky for me.  I’ve been told it gets easier.  I’m just counting on that to happen any day now.  When you have a child that’s so precious, it’s hard to tear yourself away.  I’m okay going to work in the mornings as long as she doesn’t wake up before I leave for work.  Otherwise, I’m faced with the task of trying to pull it together before I get to work.

Physically, I’m 95% better.  I still have pains when doing anything more than walking or while doing abdominal exercises.  I will be seeing a physiatrist on Monday to fix this problem.  On the positive side, I have managed to lose more than my pre-pregnancy weight. Yeah for lactation!

I’ve been told that she would “cry all day long” in my absence.  She’s been doing pretty good with Jason, with the exception of not taking adequate naps during the day, which she did 90% of the time with me.  No one’s placing blame, but I just think she knows she can get away with that more with Jason than with me.

The week after next she starts daycare.  I’ve been pretty okay with leaving her with Jason, but I think the real test of my emotions will be leaving her with the daycare.  It’s pretty hard putting all of your trust in a stranger to take care of your child.  I’m sure Athena will handle it way better than I will.

Thankfully, we’ve been pretty busy at work with all of the well child checks and colds and such, so I haven’t had that much time to boo-hoo at work.  Which would be really embarrassing.  I do have lots of pictures of Athena posted all over my office to keep me going throughout the day.  I’m so thankful that I got a chance to spend so much time with her; however, I do believe that the U.S. should adopt a similar plan of maternity leave as other countries in Europe, i.e. Germany, where they receive a whole year.  We just have to make due with what we have with this economy, though, which are 2 stable jobs and one wonderful baby.

I’ve been away from work for almost two weeks now, taking care of Athena full-time. Everyone wants to know how I’m doing, so I thought I would file an official status report.

1. Going for walks

Ann took Athena out in the stroller many, many times while she was on leave but she didn’t have the nerdy desire to record GPS tracks of her trips, like me. Below you’ll see a map of some of my walks with Athena. You can check back later to see the red tracks slowly covering the rest of Mountain View.

View Larger Map

2. Sleeping

Ann’s going back to work has altered Athena’s sleep schedule – she’s sleeping long through the night, which is great, but the longer she sleeps the less likely she is to nap during the day. That’s not good, because she gets periods where she’s obviously tired and crabby, but she just won’t nap for any appreciable amount of time. Last night she did almost 11 hours in a row, but then only got in two 20-minute naps during the day.

My mom says that’s how I was when I was a baby, but this is new for Athena and not her regular schedule. We’ll see what happens when she goes to daycare – my guess is she might go right back to wanting to stay up until midnight playing with us like she used to.

3. Eating

Since she kept getting hungry every 3 hours, right on the dot, we though we’d up her intake a bit to see if she’d go longer between meals. We are now up to 5 ounces and she’s still hungry at 3 hours. I think this is related to the sleep thing, too, since she has to make up meals for the large block of time spent sleeping.

She also seems to be in the middle of a growth spurt, she seems longer and heavier every day.

4. Taking photos

It’s actually a lot easier to take photos with Ann around for baby support – Athena is too young to really sit up on her own, so I end up holding her, propping her up, and holding the camera at arm’s length pointed vaguely in the right direction.

Luckily Athena is unbelievably cute and only getting cuter, making it very easy to take cute photos.

You may have seen some of these before, if you follow me on Flickr or Ann on Facebook.

I just grabbed another set of photos off my camera, I’ll upload them tonight or tomorrow.

5. Doing anything else

I’m not really getting anything else done at this point. I’ve checked my work email a few times and feel like I’m falling behind, but Athena deserves (and often demands) my full attention, so don’t expect too much else out of me for another week or so.

We’re not looking forward to starting daycare, Ann and I would both rather have her all to ourselves. But we’re thankful for the time we’ve had – many people don’t have employers that are so understanding.

By Jason

I’m now 30. It’s a pretty arbitrary point, but it’s as good a time to reflect on my life as any. For a long time I’ve had an informal list of life goals that I’ve thought I could accomplish. As I always say, if something is worth doing, it’s worth creating a spreadsheet. So here it is, my current list of life goals along with status updates and somewhat fictional percentages:

Here’s a link to the whole spreadsheet.

So, how am I doing so far?

At least I didn’t turn my life into a gantt chart :)

Here’s a cute photo: