It's A Beautiful Day In The Mommyhood

The working mom ups and downs are crazy sometimes. Last week was a rough one. I worked late on most days. Two of those days, I did not see my kids at all because when I got home at 8pm, they were already passed out in their beds. But, I did handle my first mediation, which was pretty cool, although very stressful.

But a week of craziness led me to today. On days like today, the crazy working-mom lifestyle feels completely worth it. I must note that days like today are only possible for me because I get to work "from home" two days a week rather than do my usual 4 hour+ commute. (To the reader who wondered why we don't just move to Seattle: the value of our [950 sq ft] house is so much lower than our mortage right now. If we wanted to move/sell, we would have to come up with 1/3 the amount of our mortgage to cover the difference. Not possible.)

But...Today was full and wonderful. It's one of those nights where I go to bed with a smile. Sure, not everything was great about today, but the good parts really outshined the bad parts. Sounds kind of like my entire life right now: extremely hard, but rescued by occassional moments of absolute, raw goodness.

My husband left today for a business trip. He will be gone the rest of the week and I get to do the single parent thing. But before he left, he accompanied us to Ryan's 1 year well-check. Ryan is ideal baby boy. He has always been 50th percentile in height and weight (with a 75th percentile head). While he's not walking or talking, he is right on track and advanced in other areas. He's tender and sweet. He has a very gently personality. He loves balls. Absolutely loves them. It makes daddy feel a little better about the fact that his other favorite toy is my blush brush.

After the check-up we took both boys to get hair cuts. It was Ryan's first haircut, We all said a happy farewell to Ryan's baby mullet. Jacob got another big boy buzz cut.

I put in a full day of work at my mom's house. At lunch time, I stopped for a short-but-meaningful cuddle time with the boys and to threaten Jacob with time-out for not listening to Grandma. Then I worked some more. I did some legal research in an unfamiliar area of law and then drafted an opposition to a motion for summary judgment.

After work, I walked into the kitchen just in time to watch Ryan feeding himself some yogurt. He is a very determined little boy. When it comes to food, he wants to do everything himself. This is totally fine with me because I can never keep the spoonfuls coming fast enough for his liking anyway.

 

Grandma took away his yogurt!

 

Then I took both boys to the gym where they played in childwatch while I cranked out 5 miles (8 minute pace! I'm getting my running legs back, slowly but surely). I have also been using a personal trainer to try to get my abs back into shape-- trying to fix the abdominal separation that Ryan gave me. My gym had a deal going on so I signed up to learn some ab exercises that I could later do on my own. I absolutely LOVE my trainer. We really connect and I love that I can count on my abs feeling so sore for the entire week that it is painful to laugh or cough. Bonus: I am now three pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight!

After I ran my heart out (feels so good to sweat!), I played with the kids a little. Ryan, no surprise, loved basketball. He's so eager to play with the big kids. We need to work a little bit on his dribble.




We had so much fun playing that I lost track of time and we didn't get home until 8:30 p.m.!

Working Mommyhood, I have conquered you! If only for one day.