Friday Round-Up

* Today is my last day of maternity leave. I thought this would be a lot easier this time—since I’ve been through it before—but it’s really not all that much easier. I guess we’ll see what happens on Monday, but my motherly anxiety is through the roof right now. I don’t know if there will be as many tears involved as when I left Nora for the first time, but I wouldn’t count the waterworks out. Still very possible. My mind has been racing as I think all of it through. What are my worries, what do I feel good about, what does Vivienne need, what am I forgetting, what will work be like…? It’s a lot.

* My brother and his wife had their second baby—a girl—last Saturday night. Her name is Sadie, and she’s beautiful. My first niece! She’s Hunter’s baby sister. I’m so happy that Vivienne will have a cousin (especially a girl!) so close in age. I hope they grow up to be great friends like I was with a couple of my cousins when we were growing up. It is really insane to see how giant Vivienne looks compared to Sadie, knowing that she was that small—almost an entire pound smaller, actually—just 12 short weeks ago. They grow so fast!

* The battery in my car died. My car is sitting dead in our driveway. I went out there yesterday to go pick up Nora from daycare and discovered that I couldn’t even unlock my car with the key fob. The battery didn’t even have enough juice to use the power door locks! It occurred to me afterward that someone—a service person who was doing some other work on my car, whether it was an oil change or something else, I’m really not sure—told me a while ago that my battery was old and nearing the end of its life. But of course, I completely forgot about that until my battery was (is!) dead as a doornail. Oops. So Michael and I need to get out there sometime today and see if we can jump start it just so I can drive it to Advanced Auto Parts for them to drop in a new battery for me. Fun times.

* Michael is changing jobs again. Long story short, his gig working from home didn’t work out for the long run like we had hoped. But things had a way of working themselves out, and oddly enough—his old company needs and wants him back. He’s starting back there on Monday, the same day I go back to work from maternity leave. Big adjustments coming for our household—AHHHHHH! As much as I am feeling not ready to go back to work yet, I will be glad once we have the first few weeks behind us and all these new things start to feel like “normal.”

* We are nearing the end of Breaking Bad. Only 7 episodes left. If all goes according to plan, we’ll have it finished this weekend. Things are starting to heat up (for the billionth time) and I’m looking forward to seeing how the writers end it all.

* Vivienne is at that stage when she has developed a vice grip. She’s gripping everything she can get her hands on. Blankets, shirts, drawstrings, HAIR. When I lay her down next to Nora, she’s constantly pulling Nora’s clothes and/or hair. Nora thinks it’s funny, but still squirms away, “Mommy! Bibbienne (Vivienne, haha) pulling my hair!” she laughs. It makes getting cute photos a bit difficult since Nora’s constantly rolling away!

* We’re taking Nora bowling for the first time ever this afternoon. It’ll be interesting to see how she does and if she likes it. I’ll report back. :)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!