2 months, back to work, and a whole new kind of tired…

Braeson turned two months last Friday, and we celebrated with all sorts of fun (read: NOT fun) vaccinations!  The three really long needles aside, the visit to the doctor's office was a pleasant one: Braeson LOVED the nurse practitioner who we saw—as in smiling at him.  It’s unheard of for this kid to smile at strangers.  He weighed in at 12.2 pounds and 23 inches long, which is exactly what I suspected, as he’s now solidly fitting into 3-6 month sleepers and onesies.  The 3-6 month and 6 month pants are still hit and miss—he’s too skinny for the waists of some of them, which is saying a lot for a 9-pound-1-ounce-at-birth-3-weeks-early-chunker.  God, I seriously hope that the doctors were ALL off on my due date—can you imagine if he’d gone until December 7 (or worse, two weeks AFTER that due date, which is how long my first doctor would have let me go?!)  He also started on Zantac twice a day for reflux, which seems to so far be working fairly well.  He’s not nearly as fussy as he had been for the first nine weeks of his life.

The last few weeks have gotten to be a LOT more fun.  He’s smiling at everything (most notably the entertainment center, any fan he sees, the space heater, Mommy, Daddy, and Mim), and he has started to laugh out loud at certain times.  He especially loves to sing “The Wheels on the Bus” because I move his hands all around while I sing it (and he doesn’t even seem to care that I’m badly off key). 

The only downside to the last few weeks is that this Tuesday I had to go back to work.  This was seriously the most gut-wrenching thing I’ve ever done.  I felt like a horrible mom, leaving my kid.  But let’s be honest here; he’s staying with MY MOM all day.  It’s the next best thing to Mommy all day long.  She raised me, so she obviously has mad skills in the parenting department, but still.  I cried all day on Monday (and so did Braeson, but he was still running a fever from the shots and had a horrible stomachache).  Tuesday I managed to get out of the door before tearing up, and I left with him smiling at me, so that helped me get through the day.  Being the amazing baby that he is, he slept from 10-5 last night (well, with the exception of a minor fussfest at 3 am that landed him in our bed) so I went to work today well rested.  It’s AMAZING how much easier teaching is when one is not pregnant.  I hope that the next time (if there is a next time) that I go through pregnancy, I can take that whole school year off.  I’d sort of rather work AFTER the baby comes than before.  It was…torture. Straight torture.

Ok, ending on a good note tonight instead of a memory of pregnancy…