Day 64

Today is my first day off after the Thanksgiving 4 day weekend. Before I talk about today, I have to share a few things from the weekend...even if it isn't part of my working less than full time...but so many cute things happened.

Zak seemed to have made another "leap" into adulthood this weekend. It's weird, but I can sometimes just SEE the transitions happening. First, his sentences are getting longer and longer. He came down to our bed one of these mornings around 6am. He wanted a drink. I told him I'd get him some water...he said "I'd appreciate juice better, but water is fine." I almost gave him juice just for the sweetness factor :-) We did a Thanksgiving lunch at his school on Wednesday. It was so much fun, but when I had to go back to work, he was sad (so were all the kids), he pouted a bit, but laid down for his nap and said good-bye. When I came back, I read on his chart that he only slept for like 30 minutes. I just kind of mentioned it out loud, didn't really expect an answer from him, but he said "I know Mommy. I was sad. I was missing you."

And then, on Saturday we went to have breakfast with Grandpa. We forgot his pillow (which he basically wants to have with him everywhere...) He said, "Ooops, we forgot my pillow! We just need to turn around and go get it. Tato, back this car up!"

AND.... by Saturday evening, he started calling me MOM! Not mommy. I can't believe how much its affected me :-) He's growing up!

Yesterday morning we had a not so nice experience starting back to work after the 4 day weekend. I knew it would be tough for all of us to get up...but as I was in the shower, I heard Zak yelling something like "Please! Clean off my pillow!" The next thing I know, Kuba brings Zak into the bathroom and Zak is covered in blood (bloody nose)...Zak thought his pillow was covered in something, but didn't realize it was coming from his nose until he saw himself in the mirror and started to panic. I must admit, my panic button kicked off for a few seconds until I told myself, its just a bloody nose...it looks worse than it is. But talk about chaos. He's screaming for me, I'm trying to get out of the shower, his nose was still gushing everywhere. It added a hectic half an hour to our morning, but looks like he's none worse for it.

Today (Tuesday) has been very busy, but great. I felt like I had so much to do, but once again we had it done by about 10:30. I made that odd sounding cranberry relish dish I keep hearing about on NPR for our Christmas party Saturday (initial taste tests are promising)...we played some "snakes" and "Cat in the Hat", ran to the store, went and met Auntie Ann to pick up Maya's birthday gift, then to FedEx to mail it. Zak kept asking if he could just stay in the car and play with the iPhone...I don't think so, not yet. Although it was tempting given the rainy weather. He also insisted that the umbrella was his...so much for keeping me dry :-)

We got home and played some more games in front of the fire place. I love this time of year. Christmas lights going, fire place going, and just hanging out together. We have so much to be thankful for. Then Jill came over for lunch and just to catch up a bit (she works just a few blocks away, so its very easy.)

And then we went to pick up Babcia from the airport! She's here for 4 months! Yeah! It took Zak all of 15 minutes to remember her.

Anyway, a nice busy day, during a very nice time of year. I'm very happy to have this extra time with Zak and for myself.

Day 63

Today has been a great day, but it took all my will to keep my mind to it. Work is getting more stressful, not less. It's funny, because if I think to write about what causes my stress, it just sounds so stupid. It's good to force myself to blog and put things into perspective. Anyway, I'm not sure if the stress is from the role, or from doing the role at part time, or both. Anyway, I suspect it will get worse yet before it gets better, so I'm prepping myself for a trying first quarter of the year. I feel like if I had maybe just one more day a week, I'd be fine...but...I also know it never works that way. You never have enough time to get everything done. As soon as things are too in control, you take on more responsibilities and there you go...back to not enough time :-)

Anyway, to the fun stuff. We had a lot of errands to run this morning. We had a leisurely breakfast, Zak took a bubble bath while I took a shower. We played some Bob the Builder, then headed out for the errands. We got Kuba's shoes repaired, went to Walgreens to pick up a prescription, and went to the mall to get a Christmas gift. We were back by 10:00, once again playing Bob the Builder, and then switched to trains. Aunt Katie came over for lunch, and we played some more games (Snakes, Topple, and again, Bob the Builder), then Zak and I went to Sharon Woods to play. We stayed out there for over an hour because the weather was so nice. Then he asked to go to Target to look at the Thomas trains. I needed to go to Target, so I said sure. Sometimes (key word sometimes), it's such a pleasure to go with him to places. He's getting so old. He holds my hand and leads the way. He helped me pick out a gift for Matti, then we looked at the trains. He wanted to buy a new Thomas movie...I checked on Netflix on the iPhone and realized that same movie was available to play instantly, so I started it up, and he sat in the cart and watched it. Saved me $15 :-) Netflix is great.

We started home at about 3, he fell asleep and is still sleeping. I think I might go cuddle up next to him for a bit :-) Looking forward to the 4 day weekend! Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 60, 61, 62

Last Tuesday was no good. Zak and I did some things, and had some fun, but I was very preoccupied with work. I think there a few things at play here. 1. I’m still trying to build up the faith and confidence between myself and my team. On my old team, we had such a good working model, it was just very natural…they knew the days I was going to be off, and they made sure they got anything they needed from me before that day, and knew how to survive the day I was gone. I think we still have some growing pains with the new team trying to figure out how to operate when I’m only there 3 days. 2) I think there is a lot of stress trying to wrap up the year before Christmas, making everyone a bit more stressed and 3) I think Mon, Wed and Thurs just isn’t a good drumbeat of work days for me. Can’t wait to get back to Mon, Tues and Thursday. Friday was better. We went up to see Grandma and Grandpa and had a great time. We raked up leaves and ran through them, had breakfast and lunch there. I added some new music to my mom's iPod (I think she's had the exact same music on that thing for 5 years!) Friday evening we threw ourselves into a family "house improvement project", and I was feeling much better (and physically exhausted) by Monday. Tuesday this week was good, and I'm going into tomorrow feeling better than last week. Thursday, we started the final pieces of our patio renovation....we replaced our existing French Doors with outward swinging doors, and put in a low-profile threshold so we can finally roll our food preparation cart in and out from the patio to the kitchen. We knocked down a small wall between the patio and kitchen, and patched the hardwood floor. My dad came down and helped do the big part (ie, actually replacing the door jambs, cutting out the old doors, patching the hardwood, etc)..but then we had 3 days worth (well, more, because we aren't finished) of switching out the windows of the doors, replacing the trim, caulking, insulating, etc. It feels so good to do physical work like that from time to time. Zak was a trooper and helped the whole time. A huge smile from me on Friday when he woke up from his nap. We had been working on the doors, and he fell asleep on the couch. I saw him starting to stir and was ready for a break, so I came over and sat on the chair beside him so I could hold him if he wanted when he woke up. Just as he was waking, I noticed there was a ladybug on his pillow. He opened his eyes, and I put my fingers on my lips so he wouldn't move too much, and pointed to his pillow. He saw the ladybug and said, "Ahh. It's a ladybug, and he's happy!" I asked, reconfirming "He's happy?" Zak said "Yeah! He sees his mommy." I couldn't ask for anything nicer. Of course I prefer to write about those things, but, there are of course those trying times. Friday night we went for dinner...we came home, and Zak apparently thought the garage floor was the place to hang his coat. It was a battle of wills to get him to pick it up. Or on Saturday, when he was taking a bath, and I told him it was time to get out...he pointed to the door and told me "No. I'm not ready...you go talk to Tato, I'll stay in the bath." The ladybug story is much nicer :-) Time is flying by. Just this week, Zak has stopped running to me when I come to the daycare. He still gets a big smile, and still says "Hi Mommy!"...but he doesn't come running, he finishes playing, shows me what he was doing, says bye to his friends. I've already missed getting the energetic run on film. One more sweet memory this week...we bought our airline tickets for our Christmas vacation. I asked Zak if he was ready to get back on an airplane. He said "Yes! I want to get on that airplane and bring Maya back here!" He knows Maya flies to see us :-) I love writing this blog. It keeps me appreciating my time during this very precious period of my life.

Day 59

I couldn't bring myself to post on Friday, because I think I'm a bit in denial. It's hard to blog about yourself when you really think you're not doing a good job...and these last two weeks, I deifnitely feel I'm slipping at work.

I've gone through all the self-help stuff...ie, you were just on vacation last week, it's always hard coming off vacation. And, this week you were in all day meetings 2 out of your 3 days, that's always hard. And you are only 4 months into the role, you know it usually takes you about 6 months to get your feet firmly on the ground. Maybe those are true, maybe they aren't...but if I was being judged purely on my performance over the last 2 weeks, I don't think I'd cut it.

I'm simply not keeping up. And next week, 1.5 days of my 3 day week are all day meetings. The following week, it's the same. It's not about catching up, because I know I'll never catch up...but it's about having enough time to do even the basics...ie at least meet 1 hour a week with everyone on my team so they keep moving forward, filing my expense reports (had 2 business dinners to pay for last week!), even getting meetings SCHEDULED I can't seem to find time for. And even worse, I now end up with 2-3 meetings triple booked, and where in the past I could always make a priority call...now, those ARE the priority meetings...I've already shaved off all the non-priority ones, and generally, people have rescheduled them for me. So I get meeting recaps from all the meetings, all of which have very valuable information, and I don't even have time to read them.

I keep asking myself, why is this just coming to a head for me now? I was feeling overall pretty good up until a couple of weeks ago. I think it's because now I truly understand everything I SHOULD be doing to do the job right, and I'm realizing I don't have time for it. I also do think people are trying to put a lot of all day meetings in here just before Dec, where everything pretty much goes dead. Let me survive until Thanksgiving! :-)

I'm of course not crying uncle...a couple of bad weeks won't stop me. But I DO need to adjust, and I don't know what I'm going to adjust just yet. When I figure it out, I'll let you know.

NOW, having said all that...Zak and I had a great day on Friday. We played trains all morning. He was as happy as I was in the morning to be together. He starts every morning now with a question "Do we get to stay home today?" I love that he wants to :-) My friend Melanie joined us for lunch, and then Zak and I napped. I wasn't able to turn off completely, but I was exhausted from having had business dinners 3 nights last week, and so just tried to relish the down time with Zak. In the evening, Kuba, Zak and I sat all together on the couch and watched a couple weeks of "Oursourced" on Netflix (well, Zak had his Thomas running seperately, but still cuddled with Kuba and I). We had the fire going, and it was just a really nice way to end a hectic week where I was filled with self-doubt. At least my family loves me :-)

Day 58

Hello Everyone! Last week I didn't blog because I don't count it as part of my less than full time, since I was on vacation from Wed-Fri. Jude, Chad and Maya came into town, and we spent 4 days with the family. It was a nice visit, but I think I pushed Zak a bit hard...it was clear because on Sunday after everyone left, at 10:30 in the morning, he drug his pillow out to the living room and said "Mommy, I'm tired." And then laid on the couch and slept for 4 HOURS!!!

I was worried about the evening, but at 8:30, we went up to his bedroom, read 2 books, and he even said, "ok, time to nap"...and was asleep in 30 seconds. He didn't wake up until 6:30 the next morning. Wow. He was tired.

Today has been a great day in the middle of what will be a tough week. I have business dinners 3 nights this week. Zak and I have stayed in the whole morning, taking turns playing games and cleaning. It's amazing how far behind laundry and stuff can get in 5 days :-) We bought this new game called "The Cat in the Hat, I can do That" - so fun! It makes you do silly things like hop around a "Trick a ma stick" while holding a cake on your head. We love it, and laugh and laugh. Zak really likes the one that makes you slide UNDER the "trick a ma stick."

I feel a little behind at work, but I assume its because I was gone for 3 days last week. It's a bit hard forcing myself to let go on this day knowing how far behind I am, but that's part of it I guess.

We did an art project together this morning (which is just painting with water colors) - but Zak was really into it. He worked on his for about 30 minutes, very meticulously adding different colors to make what he calls a helicopter. It did look like a helicopter at one point, but now it looks more like a big colorful blob. I, on the other hand, painted a page in a coloring book. When I asked Zak if I could hang my painting on his wall of art, he said no. I guess it didn't meet his standards. He also said his wasn't ready for hanging either, he wanted to work more on it later. I guess he has something specific in his mind for the final product :-)


Anyway, it's been a nice relaxing and quiet day. I feel connected with Zak again (was worried since we were starting to battle a lot the last couple of days of my brother's visit), and feel ready to take on the full day of meetings/dinner tomorrow. When he wakes from his nap, we'll go vote and then to the park. It's a beautiful fall day.

Day 57

Zak and I stayed up way too late on Thursday night. I guess that is part of the perks of working only three days a week, you can stay up late knowing you can sleep in...unfortunately, we didn't sleep in :-)

Thursday night, we went to our first Halloween party together, at his daycare. My brother and I decided to do a group thing this year, so we are all dressing as different characters from the Wizard of Oz. It'll be great once Maya, Jude and Chad get here...but for Thursday, maybe we looked a bit random just being a wicked witch and the Tin Man (Zak.) Kuba will be a wicked tree, but I think he's still trying to mentally prepare himself for this whole thing. He found an excuse (working on the window well still in the back yard), and I decided to let him slide on it.

Zak has no idea who the tin man is, nor did he have any interest in being one. He decided he wanted to be a pumpkin. I tried to convince him he could be a tin man holding a pumpkin. Not good enough. In the end, he went, but he wasn't happy. Once we got there, he had a blast...mostly jumping in the jumping balloon for about 40 minutes. I couldn't get him out. He kept taunting me, jumping close to the opening, but not close enough that I could grab him. He finally made the mistake of getting too close, and I caught him :-) He was exhausted.

Anyway, we had a nice time, got a pumpkin, made a cookie, had some dinner...but it was late by the time we got home and got in bed. Kuba had bought Zak a big Christmas train that he had seen at Lowe's...and so had it set up for him when he got home. It's a pretty cool train, you control it by remote, but it's damn loud. It make bed time a real treat. Then, at about 6 in the morning, apparently Zak remembered his train. I hear him shuffle down the stairs, and the next thing I know, the train is going, and whistling Christmas carols. Ugh.

The morning we had a lot of errands to run, especially we needed to go pick out some stone for the window well, and then he had a swimming class. Zak was so cranky. We got the stone, but Zak was in such a state over the swim lessons, that we bailed out and went to have lunch with Aunt Katie instead.

We had a great nap together (I needed one too). After a couple hours, he woke up and asked me to hold him in the orange rocking chair, which I don't do nearly as often any more. So we rocked together, and a few minutes later, I sneezed...twice. Zak opened his eyes, but his fingers to his lips, and said "Shhh." Ooops, my bad. I sneezed again, and he got up, mumbling to himself, got some tissue, brought one over to my nose and said "Blow." Of course, he wasn't covering my nose at all, just holding a tissue up to the tip of it. "Blow!" Ok, so I did, kind of, through my laughs. Then he told me to cover my mouth, and proceeded to throw the tissue away. He was now up and we did some art projects and played with trains the rest of the afternoon :-)

The morning wasn't great, but the afternoon made up for it.

Day 54, 55 and 56

Last Tuesday was not the greatest of days. I got work calls throughout the day, making it difficult to get into any momentum with Zak. The problem is that when people from work call, it's never an easy thing to fix. I all but refuse to log in on those days, so I have to rely on others to fix the issue at hand. But then I can't let it go...I am constantly wondering how they are doing with it, wondering if I should log in to help. Ugh.

Friday was almost the same, but I just forced myself to shut down. I logged on early in the morning, planning to answer a question the president had asked to have answered by Monday. I was waiting for a last piece of information which I knew I'd have in my inbox Friday morning. I was about to hit send on the email, and then checked myself...I knew that I'd then be checking my email all day to see if he had any follow-up questions. He asked for it Monday, so I decided to wait until Monday morning and just walk over to his office with the info. I shut down the computer, and shut down from work for the next 3 days. I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER now!

Let me give a shout out now to this cool blog that my friend Dana shared with me...Single Dad Laughing. It had me laughing and crying :-) I loved reading from the guy's point of view.

Friday we had a playdate at the park with a friend, then went for lunch. I did end up having a bad headache Friday afternoon, but I laid down with Zak, and felt great 2 hours later when we woke up.

Zak's been doing a lot of role playing with his Thomas the trains. Today I heard him say "Thomas, look me in the eye." (I've been saying that a lot to him lately when he gets upset.) Then he said "Thomas gasped!" He also likes to turn on the vaporizer, and then as the steam is coming out, he puts various trains, cars or firetrucks on top of it. When you ask him what's going on, he says "they are getting a wash down."

Today we started out early doing some grocery shopping, then stopped by ToysRUs where he picked out a new train. I also bought some paints and paintbrushes, because lately he's been asking to do "art projects" together, and we ran out of the paint I had. Then we went for swimming lessons, which Zak wanted no part of. On the way to the lesson, he said, "Mommy, are you tired? Let's go take a nap together instead." He knows me very well! It was a tempting offer! I don't know why he's become anti swim lessons, since he loves the water. He says the pool is too big and he's such a little boy. I had to sit on the side of the pool, pull up my pants and stick my feet in to get him to swim. Within 5 minutes he was fine, but he had his heels dug in to get started.

Then we went to meet Sara for lunch, and then home for his nap. He slept for 2 hours in his new room. I got a lot of personal things done during that time. I really enjoy not being so busy that I don't have time to think. The last few years I have just felt like I barely have had time to even do the simple things like go to the bathroom at regular intervals, pay the bills, make dental appts. It's nice to feel a bit more in control now....

We ended the evening digging out our basement window well so we could put a new one in. I swear I don't know why we even plant grass in our backyard. Everytime it starts growing, we tear it right up again. Zak was so cute working out there for hours with Kuba over the weekend and tonight. You can see a small video here.