We went to Minnesota in the middle of August. It was a wonderful trip, and we took lots of great pictures of the girls playing together with their Hammel grandparents and various friends and relations of the family. Especially now that Lillian has arrived, we feel the distance between us and Gavin's home town, and we are making an effort to close the gap with trips and better communication. (ahem)...I am sorry for the electronic lapse...sometimes life does get in the way of good intentions.
We arrived home from the trip on a Saturday, welcomed Grandma and Grandpa Lovett the next day, and then Lillian was left at home with her grandparents while I started a new job the day after that. Grandma Hammel flew in mid-week to take up the baby-care duties and get us through to the start of September, when Lillian was welcomed with eager arms into the baby room of Morgen's daycare.
Those three weeks, from the MN trip and into the new job, were among the more challenging of life with Lillian so far. Lilly went from sleeping 8 to 10 hours in a stretch to sleeping three in a row if we are lucky. When we got back to Toronto and I started work, she started refusing to drink from the bottle during the day. When I returned home at the end of the day, she would greet me with a hungry chuckle and then cluster feed for hours on end. I had two weeks of literally nothing but work, baby at the breast, sleep (which is just fragmented baby time)...and repeat. Add to this the guilt I felt every time someone says "Oh, you've gone back to work so EARLY" - you've got a recipe for few blog posts and many rough times.
Returning to work is part of my larger plan to regain some sense of contributing to our shared financial stability while also furthering my long term career goals. The timing is not what I would have chosen in an ideal world, but we live in the world we live in, and I for one am game for jumping in and trying to wrangle with the reality of that. I have priorities now that I didn't have during previous employment. I won't put as many evening hours in at the office as I once did. But those same priorities motivated me to take the job, so I can't bail out of all the evening duties even if I wanted to. In order to keep the job, I have to just suck it up and, well, do it. This upcoming week includes one lieu day, a 12-hour day, a 10-hour day, and planning for next week's evening commitments. At home, that means quite a challenge for Daddy and the two girls, especially since one of them is thinking she'll see me by 6:30pm every day, so, "why, again, should I take that bottle?? Waaaaaah, to you!"
We will all adjust (I hope). I was reminded by my cousin's beautiful wedding this weekend that families are strong, flexible, interesting things, and the Lovett-Hammels aren't going to be broken by a mom heading back to working outside of the home before her kids go to kindergarten. I might need some serious "me time" after the next few months, and Lillian might grow up thinking we don't love her as much as Morgen because we aren't blogging about her every booger, but as a whole, we are going to be fine (and we'll tell Lillian the truth of it if she starts feeling anxious one day). It is just going to be really quiet in blogland until we're through the worst of things, and along those lines, I warn you that we are not on email much these days either. Or out with friends as often. But we are with you in spirit, in the good old-fashioned way.
I will try get pictures of the girls up here eventually. For now: Shhhhh! I'm trying to sleep.
