9 Weeks

Today we officially retired most of the newborn-sized clothes. Admittedly, they were getting a little tight (short, really), especially with her bulky cloth diapers. The NB onesies aren't quite long enough for her anymore, so we packed away her first ever wardrobe.

In order to have two free hands to re-organize and package her clothes, I put her down in the swing. So far, she hadn't been the biggest fan. But today it placated her and even entertained her with nature sounds and a rotating mobile; she seemed to love it. She dozed in and out of sleep, so I used the hands-free time to make breakfast and catch up on some random housework. One of the times when I went back upstairs to check on her, she was holding a little green stuffed birdie in her hand. It seems she has somehow developed the motor skills to reach toward the hanging mobile and grab at the stuffed animals. I laughed and asked her if she was hunting.

Today we decided to take cloth diapering one step further. We are going to also use cloth wipes. Since we're doing laundry every other day as it is, why not just add cloth wipes to the mix?!? I cut up wipes from some of the many burp rags we were given, Googled recipes for homemade diaper spray, and finally bought a wet bag for the dirty diapers and wipes. Trying to do one thing to reduce our ginormous carbon footprint. Next on my list is cloth napkins, since we use more than our fair share of paper towels and napkins.

Friday I had a nightmare about going back to work. I dreamt that I forgot to ask someone to watch the baby, that I forgot to pump and leave her any milk, and that I left my breastpump at home, meaning I had to deal with serious engorgement for an entire work day away from my baby. I was a bad, distracted clinician and a bad, absent mother. It doesn't take a genius to "interpret" the meaning of that dream. I'm harboring some serious anxiety about returning to work in just over one month. It's not so much the work itself that I dread, but the being away from Francie. I've so loved being mindful, present and schedule-less the past two months, and I am anticipating all the day-to-day things I'm going to miss out on when working fulltime. It makes me wonder if my timing was completely off in trying to get pregnant. But fortunately, I have the comfort (and, jealousy) of knowing that Bean will be with her daddy fulltime, and not in some institutional childcare setting where she'd be getting colds every week.

We had our first weekend without visitors in several weeks, and took advantage of the beautiful Saturday weather to work on projects outside. Alex spent some cabbage at Home Depot in the morning while I ate breakfast with friends, and then built me a fabulous craft table for the office. It was a bit of a bumpy ride, seeing as when he was very nearly done building the table, I realized I had told him the wrong dimensions. We had to return to the Depot to buy more wood and start again.