Being a working mom ...

I've recently been thinking about my choice to continue pursuing my career. Several people have asked me if I wouldn't rather stay home, or whether I feel selfish working when I don't have to, or imply that I must live for the summer when I get to keep Elizabeth with me at home. One, when I told her I'd be traveling for work this summer, looked knowingly at another woman and said, "I guess that's the new mother," as if I couldn't be expected to know any better.

In answer to those questions, no. No, I wouldn't rather stay home. No, I don't feel selfish for pursuing a career that I love, while my daughter is having a great time playing under the care of her amazing teachers. No, I don't live for the summer - in fact, I hate to admit it, but as much as I do look forward to taking Elizabeth to the zoo and playing in the pool with her this summer, I also am quite anxious about having to entertain her for twelve hours a day (ten if you don't count her nap time). I may take advantage of her daycare's summer drop-in program that allows me to buy 5 days that I can spread out over the summer and leave her with them every now and then and do something by myself.

I have an amazing husband who not only supports my desire to work, but actively encourages it and makes it easier. He either makes dinner or does the dishes every night, entertains Elizabeth after dinner and before bed in the evenings, doesn't complain when the house isn't perfectly clean all the day (or anywhere close), takes days off when she's sick and I really can't miss work, and NEVER makes me feel guilty for the decision that we made together to put Elizabeth in daycare and allow me work. This week and next, he's actually playing the single dad so that I can pursue my passion, training teachers for NMSI, and helping them to develop strategies to teach students to think, read and write critically and independently. I'm in Tennessee this week, and headed to Colorado next week.

Do I miss Elizabeth? Absolutely. Do I wish that I could have a career and spend at least a little more time with her? Sure. I check in on her several times a day via online closed circuit camera, FaceTime with her at night while I'm out of town (she's really good at responding on FaceTime - she waves and says hi, then smiles and tries to reach me through the phone), and really miss her when I get up in the morning and don't see her. But that's my problem. She won't remember ten years from now that I was out of town a few days when she was one. She gets excited about going to school in the mornings, and is actually less grouchy mid-morning when she's there, surrounded by friends and things to do, than she is at home playing with me.

I have an amazing, well-adjusted daughter who loves to play both with me and her dad and by herself, who learned to sing "Row, Row, Row" months ago, and who can currently insert the "E-I-E-I-O" in the appropriate spots in Old MacDonald (mostly). She walks, and eats well, and sleeps all night, and finger-paints, and colors, and plays well with others (except her cousin, who she likes to push over after stealing his toys) ... the list could go on and on. She's awesome, and I'm a working mom. I think the arrangement is just fine.

Praying for Parents in Oklahoma

As I was putting Elizabeth to bed tonight, I began to say her prayers with her just like we do every night. We started by thanking God for the rain, and that Elizabeth had had a good day today. Then we thanked God for Mom and Dad's good days, and asked God to help Elizabeth sleep well tonight - to keep her teeth from bothering her, and to help her ears be healthy.

And then we added an extra line that doesn't usually go in our bedtime prayer (yes, the ears make it in every night) - we asked God to be with the parents in Moore who had lost their children yesterday - and that's as far as I got. As hard as I tried, I couldn't think of how specifically to pray for them. I don't know what they need right now, other than God's presence. I can't imagine going through what they are going through today. I don't know what I'd do if it were Elizabeth who had been killed in the tornado yesterday, or what I would expect God to do.

So we left it at that - "God, be with the parents in Moore tonight, and ... I don't know what else to say, but just be with them." And I felt tears come into my eyes as I said that, and gave Elizabeth an extra kiss on the forehead before I laid her down in her crib.

How hard can it be to feed a baby?

I never realized how difficult it can be to figure out what to feed a baby every day, especially one who is lactose intolerant and allergic to cinnamon. It was easier when she did purees - her favorite was Moroccan-spiced lentils with roasted eggplant - and I could just food process a big batch, freeze it, and pull out a couple cubes for dinner, along with some yogurt, cereal and fruit. We noticed a couple weeks ago though, that she was refusing to eat most of her meals, and then having a HUGE bottle of formula before bed (she did 14 ounces one night), so we decided to switch her over to finger foods. She immediately got excited about eating again, but her tastes are more discriminating now.

Yesterday she would only eat her lactose-free cheese and soy yogurt. Nothing else. We even bought a box of Cheerios to give her, since she loves eating them at school. She threw them at us, one at a time, cackling maniacally.

The meal planning gets a little crazy sometimes. I have to get the menus from school, then figure out what she can and can't eat (the lactose intolerance makes it tricky) and then decide what to send her to make sure she has at least 2 fruits and 2 vegetables during the day, along with her cheese snack. And that's not even considering dinner. Since I don't get her home until about 5:00 most days, I don't make dinner before it's time for her to eat at 5:30 (hah, I don't really make dinner at all - Ryan's a much better cook than I am). So I have to find something healthy that she's willing to eat, and then remember when we eat dinner to save a few bites of anything baby-friendly that we have.

So, I've decided to start menu planning for her, just like we do for ourselves. Here's the menu for tomorrow:

Breakfast - fresh orange slices, cheerios
Lunch - chicken nuggets, green beans, pineapple, peas & carrots
Snack - oatmeal cookie, cheese
Dinner - soy yogurt, roasted zucchini, pancake

Now if only I could figure out how to get her to actually get the food into her mouth instead of dropping it into the high chair, onto the floor, or into her hair. Oh well - one step at a time.

Sweet smile

Tonight Ryan came to get Elizabeth after her bath, all wrapped up in her towel and sweet-smelling, just like every night. As I handed her to him, my squirming, kicking daughter became very still and just laid back in his arms, looked up at her dad, and smiled.

The stillness only lasted about fifteen seconds, but the love that I was able to see the two of them share will last much, much longer.

Getting tubes

You may or may not know that Elizabeth has basically been sick since I started back to work. She got a cold the weekend before I started (November 9, to be exact) and has not had more than about 10 days of feeling well since. She's had two stomach bugs, a couple sinus infections, croup, bronchiolitis, and 4-5 ear infections. The worst of it has been the ear infections. Every time she gets a cold it turns into an ear infection, which leads to antibiotics, which leads to diarrhea, which leads to a terrible diaper rash - and this all comes with a serious sleeping problem. I say four or five ear infections because we're never quite sure if they go away and she gets new ones, or if it's just the same infection continuing on. With the most recent ear infection, she took a basic antibiotic followed by a stronger antibiotic followed by antibiotic shots followed by another strong antibiotic - and then 5 days later started the strong antibiotic again.

Fortunately, in the midst of this last ear infection cycle, we took her to the ENT and got her scheduled to get tubes. It was honestly one of the easiest parenting decisions we've made. Life was miserable with her being constantly sick, I was almost out of sick days at work (I have one left) and she was using way more than her fair share of antibiotics and contributing the drug-resistant strains of bacteria causing so much concern in the medical world.

So on the Thursday of Spring Break, I took her in for tubes. Ryan was still at his conference in San Antonio, so I got to take her alone and text him every half hour or so with updates. Our day started off at 6 am. Elizabeth had been wheezing for a few weeks, the residual effects of her bronchiolitis, so she was taking an inhaled steroid twice a day, along with Albuterol as needed. They wouldn't do the surgery if she was wheezing that morning, because of concerns about the general anesthesia, so I had to do her breathing treatments before we headed to the hospital. Elizabeth was a little confused about why she was up so early. Here she is on the way to the hospital, still dark outside.

When we got there, she enjoyed watching the fish in the aquarium. I love that almost all pediatric offices have aquariums.

Once we got back to the pre-op area, we had almost an hour to wait, so Elizabeth passed the time by first chewing the cover off one of her books, then wandering around to the other families waiting to be taken back. She especially liked one family with a three-year-old red-headed girl. Elizabeth kept walking me over to them and babbling at them. She ended up walking right up the dad and putting her arms up to be picked up. He held her in his lap for a few minutes and she loved it, babbling at him, his wife, and both the kids with them. Once they left, she took me over to another family with a boy about her age. He had thick curly black hair, her favorite kind to pull, so our visit with them didn't last very long :-/ Here she is with her book, and her hospital bracelet.

Once she got taken back, it was over very quickly. From the time they started, to when they came to get me, only about 7 minutes passed. I got to see her earlier than they'd said I would because when they gave her ibuprofen when they finished, she thought it was food and remembered that she hadn't eaten breakfast yet. She was half-awake and crying when I got to her, and didn't settle down until she was eating.

Her ENT told me that they had found some VERY thick fluid behind her ear drums, more of a paste than a fluid, which was what had been causing the persistent infections. Without tubes, she wouldn't have gotten better - nice to know we made the right call.

We were able to go home about 30 minutes after her surgery. Aside from some marks on her face from the mask they'd used to put her under, she was just fine. Here she is on the way home, just looking a little worn out:

For the rest of the day, you wouldn't even know she'd been through surgery. She played with her toys, napped and ate normally, and at bedtime, went right to sleep.

She'd definitely acquired some bad habits from the months of being sick. She'd been waking up for an hour or two at a time every night, and eating once and sometimes twice in the middle of the night. It took almost two weeks to get her sleeping through the night again, after she started feeling better.

Now though, she's sleeping better than ever - from 7 pm to 7 am - and hasn't been sick in 3 weeks, except for some allergy sniffles. I've stopped worrying every time she sneezes that she's getting a cold that will lead to an ear infection.

It seems like every phase is SO long with babies. When she was sick, it felt like she'd always been sick, even though it was only for about 3 and a half months. And now that she's healthy, I hardly remember the sleepless nights worrying about her. It feels like the sleeping and relaxing at night is the most normal thing in the world. I know it probably won't last, but it sure is nice for now.

Spring Break

Over spring break this year, Ryan and I had a chance to get away for the weekend. My parents came up to watch Elizabeth (thank you!) and we headed to San Antonio. I always thought it would be easy to leave Elizabeth for a few days - I mean, who wouldn't want to reclaim some semblance of their life before having a baby? - but it ended up being pretty tough for me to leave her. I was watching her in my mom's arms, smiling and waving bye to me, and I felt like such a jerk, knowing she wouldn't see me again for two days. But those feelings evaporated quickly. We stopped for breakfast (coffee and pastries) at the Black Rooster Bakery, then got on the road.

It was seriously one of the best weekends away I've ever had. Probably because it had been over a year since we'd gotten away together, and over a year and a half since we'd had a vacation without a baby and without me being pregnant - but we had an amazing time. We started with lunch on the River Walk, live music at an Irish pub, drinks every couple hours all afternoon and evening, visiting the Alamo (the Mexicans were besieging it when we arrived), and dinner at "The Original" Mexican restaurant on the River Walk.

On Sunday, we had a really nice brunch at the Carriage House restaurant at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens (crepes filled with ham, brie, and asparagus and topped with hollondaise sauce), then went to the San Antonio Museum of Art. From there, we saw the Pearl brewery in the distance and decided to see if we could take a tour. When we arrived, they were having a paella cook-off on the grounds, and the woman guarding the entrance let us know that the tickets were $65 - and they were sold out - so we decided to walk around a little instead. As we wandered down an alley between two buildings, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the festival - so we pulled our sleeves down a little to hide the fact that we didn't have wristbands, and had a good time sitting on a restaurant patio having a beer and watching all the people sampling food. It looked amazing, but we were content with just hanging out and not trying to sneak food on top of sneaking in in the first place.

Later that afternoon, we wandered down to the Mexican Market and bought Elizabeth an adorable white dress, then headed to Zinc Bistro and Wine Bar for a pre-dinner drink. We had a great time sitting at the bar, trying a couple new wines - and the bartender offered us a taste of a silver tequila infused with serrano chilis and pineapple, that was really interesting. From there, we did dinner at Esquire Tavern, and had a couple craft beers, and I had an amazing burger - organic beef topped with white cheddar, ancho chili refried beans, jalapeno aioli, and roasted jalapenos.

Even though it was fun, I was definitely ready to get home on Monday morning. While I was waiting for my flight at the airport, I sat at a restaurant bar to eat some breakfast and passed 30 minutes showing pictures of Elizabeth to the man sitting next to me. He showed me pictures of his 6 year old who'd recently broken her arm during a gymnastics class. It's amazing how just the shared experience of having kids gives you an instant connection to people.

So I headed home, and Ryan stayed in San Antonio for a conference for a few more days. Elizabeth had enjoyed the weekend with her grandparents, but was very happy to see me. She dove into my arms as soon as she saw me and let me hold her for about 10 minutes instead of her customary 30 seconds then demanding to get down and play. It's good to be appreciated.And it went so well, we're already planning our next vacation  :)

At the Park

I took Elizabeth to the park this afternoon. She was a little irritable from only taking a 20 minute nap, so I decided she needed an outing. This is what she looked like before the park:

On the walk to the park, I sang her favorite song - I don't even know what it's called, but it's the one from Fantasia that accompanies the broomsticks marching. There's one part of it that I sing in an obnoxiously loud, throaty voice, and it makes her laugh every time. It can even make her stop crying when we're driving in the car. So I tried that. No laugh, but at least it got a smile. And it got me a sore throat. There were several other kids at the park when we got there, and she had a great time walking around holding onto my hands, following them wherever they went. Here are some pictures of her playing:

I couldn't get any of her smiling while she played, but trust me - she had a great time. I spent at least half my time brushing mulch and leaves out of her hands so that she couldn't eat them. She did get one handful in her mouth though, and that led to quite a coughing fit and me trying to finger-sweep the debris out of her mouth. It wasn't pretty.

While she was walking me around the playground, I heard a couple little girls talking to each other - they introduced themselves, asked how old the other was, and then started playing together. It was so sweet and innocent. I'm looking forward to Elizabeth being able to make friends on the playground. She's already standing, cruising, waving, and babbling at people - it won't be too long now :)

We finally had to head home after 45 minutes for dinner. Elizabeth was all smiles when I got her into the stroller, and even waved bye to her new friends. I really enjoyed being a mom today.

Why am I doing this?

I've thought about creating a blog for a while. Actually, Ryan suggested it about a year ago and I dismissed it. But more and more, I've found myself composing really long FaceBook posts (and then not posting them, because who really wants to read that much on FaceBook) and I figured I might as well go for it.

I'm not sure yet how much I'll be sharing with the world - will this be about just our family, about my work, about all the conflicting emotions that go along with being a working mom - I don't know yet. But I thought I'd give it a shot. So here's my blog, and I thought the title summed up my life right now: Crazy, Busy, Awesome Life.