Matt & Andrea Thieman

Well, I’ve nearly made it through the second week of work after maternity leave, and I can officially say that life is starting to feel more normal now.  I have my morning routine more clearly defined, my daily pumping routine is set, and our evening routine with Carter seems to be catching on as a routine for him as well.  So, I feel that from here on out, things should be less hectic and more “normal”. 

This morning when I dropped Carter off at daycare, the head teacher spent a little time talking with me as she usually does.  I told her how it was so hard for me to leave Carter at the center yesterday when he was in such a fabulous mood – he smiled at me about 6 times as I was getting him dressed and out the door.  Her response was something to the effect of “I know, I was holding him yesterday after he ate, and got a picture of him with my phone when he was smiling like he was about to laugh”.  My heart totally sunk.  Not only do I think it’s odd that she’s taking pictures of Carter with her personal phone, but it totally bummed me out that she gets to enjoy my son more than I do.  It got me to thinking – does he laugh at daycare?  Because I’ve never seen him laugh except for in his sleep.  And as I leave my son with someone else to watch all day, every day, how many other “firsts” am I missing?  It makes me wish I would have taken an additional 3 to 4 weeks of unpaid maternity leave so that I could enjoy his current development all to myself during the days.  Selfish, I know, but I would have never guessed that he’d be changing so much within the seventh and eighth weeks.  And I would have never guessed that it would bother me so much to miss these little milestones in his life.  In any case, it’s getting harder to drop him off because he’s always smiling in the mornings, so it’s obvious that he’s pretty happy at daycare.  I should probably just be happy knowing that he doesn’t hate it.

I stepped on the scale this morning to a surprising 130 pounds!  That’s down from my 135 when I posted that I need to lose 7 pounds.  I honestly couldn’t believe that I lost 5 pounds because I have been eating like a cow this week - grazing throughout each day.  I will admit that I’ve been grazing on healthy food these days, so that might contribute to the loss, but I’ve still been consuming a LOT of calories.  I guess it might be true what they say about breastfeeding helping to drop pounds.  Too bad my pre-pregnancy jeans still don’t fit.  It’s weird being at a weight where I know I was at one time able to fit perfectly in the jeans that are still sitting in my closet, yet now I can hardly button them.  But amazingly, I don’t really care too much – besides knowing that I have a bunch of expensive jeans in the closet that I may never wear again.  I’ve decided that our little boy is well worth the change in my figure (and the loss of my jean investment – ha!).

This weekend is probably going to be a busy one for us, and I’m kind of looking forward to the busyness.  With the warm weather today and Matt having the day off for Arbor Day, he’s going to mow the fast growing lawn, spray for bugs, pull the landscaping fabric out of our mulched flower beds (nobody told me – until last year – that you only use it for rock), and put another layer of mulch down.  This afternoon, Matt’s mom is coming into town, so we’re going to get together with her, Jamee, and Codi for some steaks on the grill and probably play some cornhole (got to practice up for the annual tournament!).  Then tomorrow, my parents are coming up to see Carter for a little while.  Mom and I are planning do a little shopping too.  If Mom and Dad stick around long enough, I’ll probably get some landscape work done as well – yay (I’ve been itching to get out and dig in the dirt)!! �   Finally, on Sunday, we have Carter’s baptism and have planned to also have lunch with our family afterward.  So, by Sunday afternoon, I think I’m going to be ready to just lie on the couch at home and watch a movie or something.  Hopefully Matt and Carter will feel like doing the same thing.

Well, I’ve almost made it through my first week back at work.  Only one more day left before I can focus on getting something done besides work and sleep.   Okay, maybe I’ll still focus on getting some sleep.  The week started out kind of rough as I tried to catch up on all of the things I missed over the six weeks of being at home and get into a schedule of pumping milk for Carter while at the office, but the last couple of days have been improving.  Overall, I’m happy to be back at work, but I do think I’ll be looking forward to the weekends when I get to sleep past 4:30am and will have time to clean our home as well as get other miscellaneous things done.  There just isn’t time to do things during the week anymore since I want to spend the couple of hours I do have at night with our little man. 

Speaking of Carter, he of course started daycare this week and so far seems to be really enjoying it.  By the looks of his daily activity report, he does a lot of sleeping, eating, and peeing.  But I think he also spends some time awake because his care takers tell me that he’s got quite the handsome little grin – - and of course I totally agree with them!!  Sure, I was a little jealous to think that other women are getting to enjoy my little guy more than I get to, but then I think back to the days when I was at home with him and hardly getting a minute to myself during the day.  That helps to remind me why I don’t mind working.  In any case, it makes me feel good to know that Carter is smiling at daycare because it helps me to realize that he’s pretty happy there and obviously doesn’t mind me dropping him off for the entire day.

Carter did obtain his first infant issue this week though.  On Tuesday when I picked him up from the daycare center, his left eye nearly wouldn’t open because there was a yellowish discharge that was “gooping” up his eye.  Yeah, pretty nasty to think about it.  I was freaking out, thinking I was a horrible parent who allows their child to get a miserable eye infection by sending them to some random daycare center with disease infested children.  Turns out that he just has a clogged tear duct that’s sometimes caused by sinus congestion which oddly enough we both contracted from Daddy/Matt.  The crappy part about it is that now we have to massage his nose at every diaper change for the next couple of months and possibly up to a year until it clears up.  Who would have thought that a cold could cause such a miserable condition for an infant and his parents?

For those of you who have been praying for Carter to start sleeping through the night for the sake of his mother’s sanity, I think your prayers are starting to be answered.  Last night he went 5 hours between two of his feedings, sleeping for 4 of the 5 hours!  And then his next stretch was 3.5 hours – yay!!  We’re making progress.    Matt and I are just waiting for the morning that we get to wake up and wonder if our son is still alive because he’s slept so long.  Just thinking about it gets me excited…I think it’s only a couple more weeks away! 

We found out today that we might be getting new neighbors.  I’ve kind of enjoyed the last 7 months without having people living in the rental property next to us…it’s been so peaceful!  Well, it was pretty peaceful with the last tenants because they were deaf, but they still made noise here and there.  Matt seems to think that maybe the owners just forgot to put the sign back in the yard after mowing it, but my guess is that we’ll have someone moving in next door soon.  I guess only time will tell which one of us is correct.

Matt accidentally called me “chubby” tonight, so it must be time for me to start trying to lose this 7 pounds of pregnancy weight that I’ve been toting around for so long now.  There are a couple of problems with it though.  The first one is that dieting isn’t really an option because in my mind I feel like I can eat whatever I want and not gain weight – which obviously isn’t the case.  And the second problem is that I have absolutely no time for working out.  I’ll have to spend some time thinking about how I’m going to do it though.  Normally I’d just go on a low carb diet and eat only meat, cheese, and good carb veggies while working out every single night until I dropped 10 pounds and then binge on ice cream for a night to gain a few back before going back to a diet that will allow me to maintain my new healthy weight.  But since I’m breastfeeding, that’s just not an option as it could cause my milk supply to decrease.  So, it sounds like I’ll have to drop weight the “old-fashioned” way, which doesn’t sound like fun at all.  Matt just read this little paragraph and wants you all to know that he didn’t call me “chubby”…so I think you should all judge for yourself.  The conversation went something like this (we were talking about girls from daycare) -

Matt:  “A short girl had Carter when I went to pick him up” – Matt picked him up for a doctor appointment today.

Andrea:  “Oh, that was probably Lindsay.”

Matt:  “She was kind of chubby.”

Andrea:  “Like me?”

Matt:  “No, bigger than you.”

Andrea:  “Hmm…then I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

Matt:  “Well, not that much bigger than you.”

I know he didn’t really mean to say what he said because no husband in his right mind would tell his wife that she’s chubby.  But I can’t let him get off that easy.    Right girls??  I think as he is reading this again he’s realizing that he really did call me chubby…ha!!  I love you honey. 

Well, on that note, I think it’s time for me to wash my face and go to bed.  Yeah, I should probably hop on the treadmill, but I’m just too tired today.  I’ll start my diet and exercise tomorrow.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter.  Check out our chubby (10 lbs 7 oz) baby.