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| I wish he didn't have pants on in his 3 month photo. I think the size of his chunky thighs is a huge difference! |
And that's as good a segue way as any for one of the biggest events of the month: my return to work. Even before I was pregnant I often heard women say that with number two they could barely wait to get back to work. While I definitely wasn't that excited, I was a little less anxious this time around. And I absolutely felt a lot less guilt. Don't get me wrong, I still cried in the weeks leading up to my return, I just cried a little less than I did with Noelle.
On the (semi) dreaded first day back, I was a lot more relaxed than I thought I'd be. Which obviously had nothing to do with the 4200 emails I had waiting for me! Yikes :) Thankfully I didn't have to do much as everything had already been taken care of by my coworkers. We had also moved to a new building while I was on leave so it was fun to walk around and say hi to people as I acclimated myself to my new surroundings. Working in HR means you know just about every employee so there were a lot of catch up chats and baby picture viewing!
One of the main things that made my first day easier for me was that Bryan stayed home with Theo. There was an unfortunately timed stomach bug "outbreak" at Theo's new daycare, so we chose to keep him home. Knowing Dad was there to ease Theo into the transition set my mind at ease also. I wish we would have planned this from the start and I now tell every pregnant woman I know to do this!
I settled into my new role as a working mother of two pretty easily and there have only been a few minor hiccups. I thrive on to do lists and schedules, so I've done well with getting as much as possible done the night before and my routine hasn't varied much. This drives Bryan crazy as he needs a little spontaneity, but I keep telling him that, for a little while, our jobs are just to make sure our household keeps up and is functioning. It won't last forever and before we know it we'll have two independent kids who won't need as much "work". And we will be so sad about it!
Going back to work obviously means child care for the kiddos. We are so lucky that Noelle's school has a child care onsite so we do not have to worry about transportation midday. I drop her off at school at 7:45 and after a few days of "weaning" she waits in line by herself (with friends and teachers of course) while I continue on. She's in class from 8:00 until 11:00 and then goes to child care until Bryan picks her up around 4:15. We've had a few struggles with this transition, but overall she's doing very well.
We're trying something different with Theo - an in-home daycare. It's going really well so far and I hope to find time to write a post sometime after we've been going for a while to talk about the differences between in-home and a (great) center.
So what else has been going on?
--Our little guy laughed his first laugh at 9w5d and we captured this little video.
Which I can't get to load right now...argh!
Since then the laughing has been sporadic but he is always doing those giant, open mouth silent laughs! Theo is super smiley in general and will flash his adorable gummy grin to almost everyone he meets. I'm wondering if this will change as he gets older, like it did for Noelle. I just don't remember Noelle being a smiley baby with non-family. Our nickname for her was The Observer because she was very aware of her surroundings, studying everything and everyone and soaking it in. With this, she wasn't always very interactive with strangers and would just stare at them. Theo is definitely the opposite so far!
Little man is also super chatty (definitely gets that from his mommy!). He is a babbling fool and loves it when we respond to him and hold a "conversation."
--The car seat is no longer referred to as the devil and does not garner instant screams from Theo. While he hasn't fully accepted his nemesis, the relationship is a lot less frosty than it was last month. Our ears are much happier for it. Oh, unless he's hungry, then there's no relief.
--Theo also started sleeping a lot better about halfway through the month. I don't think it's a coincidence that it started happening around the time we started daycare. Lori keeps our little guy pretty active during the day and he eats really well also, which I'm pretty sure leads to a much better night's sleep. Theo is usually down for the night around 9:30, up sometime in the 4:00 hour and then again around 6:30. I really couldn't ask for a better sleep schedule at this point and am soaking it in because I know that everything, good and bad, is just a phase :) Noelle was an absolutely terrible sleeper until she was about 10 months old, so I'm perfectly happy with anything better than we had with her!
--I'm not sure where Theo is size-wise as he didn't have a doctor's appointment this month, but it's obvious he's growing. Most 0-3 month clothes don't fit anymore, especially shirts. He looks much less squished in 3-6 month clothes, although the pants are usually pretty long. He's like me and Noelle and has a long upper body, so the shirts are the first to get too small.
--Nursing is still going amazingly well! It's actually gone a little too well in respect to introducing bottles. As in, we never really did. Oops. It's just so much easier to nurse him wherever we go than to give him a bottle and then have to pump. We finally made time to practice the bottle about 10 days (!) before I went back to work. I got my first night out with friends and Bryan took bottle duty. We tried a few more times before I went back and Theo struggled a little every time and it was very obvious that there was only one bottle he liked. The problem with that was that the one he chose was a Similac bottle that we got as a freebie with one of those formula samples they send you.
Side note: I don't typically sign up for things so I have no idea how these companies always know you're pregnant. Some kind of pregnant lady radar or something...more likely that my info got sold by The Bump or Baby Center.
Anyway, when I went to Babies R Us to buy more bottles, I found out that they had actually been discontinued and weren't available in stores. Even though the website said they had them. Oh, and did I mention this was the night before Theo's first day at Lori's. Go us. So we decided to see if Theo would take a different bottle and bought a Dr. Browns and an Avent. No luck there for us or Lori. He was definitely a Similac man - kind of ironic, isn't it?! I jumped online and found bottles and nipples in slow and medium flow on Diapers.com. Bonus - they were super cheap because they were discontinued. We're hoping that if Theo gets to the point that the medium flow nipple is too slow for him, he won't be so picky and will accept a different bottle type. Again, this is NOTHING compared to our bottle struggles with Noelle so I will take it and be a happy camper!
--We took a mini family vacation to my parent's place up north in early September and enjoyed some relaxation.
--Theo got his first cold this month, which was inevitable with Noelle going back to school. The worst of it was a runny nose and small cough and he was better after a couple of days.
--I mentioned above that Lori has been keeping Theo plenty busy and one of the things she has been working on is getting him to look to the right. At his 2 month checkup our pediatrician noticed that Theo didn't look to the right very much and his neck had gotten a little stiff. We've been working on it and it's slowly getting better, although he still prefers looking left.
All in all a great month full of ups and downs and lots of baby snuggles and smiles :)
