HI HO.. HI HO... BACK TO WORK I GO

Tomorrow marks the end of my second week of officially being back at work. It hasn't been bad, even though I had been dreading it with every fiber of my being, every cell in my body, every nucleus of my cells, every nucleolus of my nucleus... eh, you get the picture. Yup, I didn't want to go back.  

The working part wasn't the problem, but the part where I was going to miss being home with my little people all the time... AND... oh yeah, that small problem with the littlest of my little people whose longest stretch of sleeping at night had been for three hours at most. There was no way I was going to be able to function at work with a kid that woke at 1 AM and got up every.  two.  hours. after that.

My mom is a liar.
She loved staying up and partying with me all night long.

Somewhere between his 10th and 11th week, it 'clicked' for my little man.  He's now putting his big sister's night time sleep record to shame!! For the past two weeks, he has been sleeping from 7:30 or 8 PM at night until 6:30 or 7 in the morning. Boooo-yah!!


He must've had a big developmental spurt. 

Or maybe he heard me ask his father, "Is it too late to take him back to the hospital and ask for a different kid?"

I was only kidding. 

Kind of.

We have all survived getting on the 'mommy goes back to work' schedule... Evie goes to school full-time and Abbott goes part time right now. I actually take Abbott to the office with me 1-2 days per week.  Seriously, he's my little assistant! I know I'm incredibly lucky to be able to take him with me, but my office is quiet enough and he behaves well enough that I can actually get work done.

Plus, my theory is that I would either shut my door a few times per day for less than 10 minutes and nurse him... or I would shut my office door a few times more per day and be chained to the lovely ol' breast pump for 30-45 minutes at at time.


And the pump is not fun. On days that Abbott isn't with me, I've often considered "Mooooo-ing" really loud when I hear co-workers walking down the hall and coming to a stop when they see my door is shut and the "do not disturb" sign is out.  Ah, yes... I'm the office comedian. Can't you tell?

My coworkers are great. They all tell me that he's adorable (of course he is, he's only the most adorable kid in the world!) and they all find excuses to pop in and visit my office on days I have him with me.

I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep him there though. Evie also came with me when she was a little bitty baby, at least up until I found I wasn't able to juggle both work and mobile baby (ie. crawling) at the same time.  

Yup, I'm both an opportunist and a realist.

And being a realist, I'm sure you're tired of reading by now and you want to see PICTURES!


(That's what you come here for anyways, right?!)

Evie gets back to her office work too.
A hole punch and a piece of paper. Endless entertainment.

She's willing to take a break for homemade pizza though.
Photo bomb courtesy of Dadda.

Poor kid got my duck lip. It's not just my lip, but the Neal family lip.
If you've ever seen me or my older brother first thing in the morning after some heavy sleep (hopefully you haven't!), you'll see that we have a seriously puffy upper lip.
Not so much of a Botox-makes-it-look-sexy pout, but more like a bee stung a duck's face and made it swell up into a bubble.
(And I'm sure Uncle Winston is so happy I just informed the world of this facial trait.)

Quit talking about my lips, people!

Also, I'm sure you've heard of the website Pinterest by now. It's my new favorite quick reference guide for everything fun. Need a cool recipe? Just type in some key words and a picture appears with a link to step-by-step directions of whatever you want to make. Need a distraction for a kid? A quick search will get you incredibly creative ideas.  

I saw a neat idea the other night while scrolling through and I just had to try it with Evie.

It's MAGIC! It's adorable! It's how to catch a fairie!!! 

Directions: empty a glowstick (or three or four glowsticks) in a glass jar. Add glitter. Shake.  Boom! You caught a fairie!

This is my attempt to catch the glow that the jar emitted. We had the lights turned off in the kitchen and my camera is picking up the light coming in from the jar and the living room. The glow was actually brighter than I had thought it would be! But with an impromptu photo session and a very uncontrolled environment, I couldn't capture the full extent of the glow.
Evie was amazed (and obviously very wiggly!).

Hi, fairies!!

This was taken at almost-pitch black in her bedroom and my camera picked up the sliver of light from the space under her door.
We had to leave the jar here on her bookshelf because she had to fall asleep looking at her captured fairies!

The munchkins at bath time earlier tonight. 
Best time of the day!

Book time with Dadda. Madeline is one of our favorites.

"Where's Walrus?"
Another favorite.

There he is!

Where's Walrus' mustache?!

No, no, no Dadda! It's a LITTLE mustache!

It's off to bed for me now... because it's a long work day tomorrow.

"A mother's work is never done," right? 

Well, this mother is done for the day. And since it's only 11:10 PM at the moment, I've actually got 50 minutes left in the day to...

Adios, kiddos!

Zzzzzzzzzzzz...