Tommy's First Christmas

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We spent Christmas Eve in Bayonne at my parents' house - attended the 4:30pm children's mass though we got there a little after 4 to get seats, taking Tommy in the stroller since St. Henry's is only 2 blocks from my parents' house. Back at the house we had appetizers and then dinner. We originally were not going to open presents because it usually turns into chaos, but we ended up doing so. It was a little more organized, though I was squished in a corner and Tommy slept through it all! But I'm glad we did do presents because it's something we've always done when we celebrate Christmas at my parents' house. For the years John and I went to Charleston to be with the Beurskens side of the family, we usually would do Christmas the Sunday before and do all the presents then.

Christmas Day it ended up just being the 3 of us at home ourselves, as it was a much later night on Christmas Eve for everyone than we thought it would be and no one wanted to drive - we did not have anything official planned. My sister and her family invited us all for brunch, but getting ourselves up and moving was not happening, and while my parents thought about doing brunch at my sister's and then coming to our place for dinner, decided it was just too much driving for them since it would be an hour to each place. So John and I cooked the oven roaster chicken for ourselves and ate it in the dining room, which was funny since we've never done that for just the 2 of us. Tommy joined us in his bouncy seat on the floor. Afterwards we went to our friends' the Dillons for dessert.

Christmas morning we went in to see Tommy and he was so happy and smiling. After his bottle, we came downstairs and gave him some rice cereal and then we opened presents. While he is too young obviously to open presents or understand, we of course had fun telling him everything and giving him his gifts from everyone. We hung out in our pajamas for part of the day and just relaxed. A very quiet, but special first Christmas with Tommy!

You can click on the collage above to get a larger view of some of the pictures taken on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We even got the four cousins in one shot though unfortunately someone is either crying or not looking in all the shots that we got!

This week is my final week at home before going back to work on January 4th, which will be TJ's first day at daycare. I am trying to make the most of every day and minute with Tommy. Everyone is asking me if I'm "excited" to go back to work. I don't think "excited" is the word I would use. Anxious, yes. Feeling guilty because I'm kind of looking forward to it. Sad because I have come to enjoy the time I've been able to spend with TJ at home - I was very fortunate to be home for almost 4 months with him, when I know other moms who had to go back to work after only 6 weeks! It just took me a while to adjust to being by myself with an infant and no adults around. I had a TON of sick days from 8+ years that I used for the first 8 weeks of maternity leave, and then went on Family Leave the rest of the time, but used all the vacation days I carried over from last fiscal year and a few from this year so I received full pay while I was home on Family Leave too. If I didn't use the vacation days, I could have applied for the FMLA insurance which would have paid a portion of my salary, and I would have had to pay for my benefits. (There was no way I would be able to use 37 vacation days from January-June, and I'd lose the ones from last fiscal year at that point if I did not use them, so it was good to be able to use them and get full pay while home with Tommy.) Family Leave gives you up to 12 weeks on top of the maternity leave and protects me so that I have a job to come back to. Based on when I am returning to work, I only used 7 weeks of Family Leave, and could use the other 5 at any point up until Tommy is a year old technically. But I knowI have to go back to work at some point, and want to do this before Tommy might have separation anxiety. I feel right after the holidays is the best time of any...new year, new start. It's bad enough that we'll be dealing with MY separation anxiety next week! I think I read that babies have the separation anxiety usually around the 6 month point, which we realize will still be a possibility in certain circumstances, but at least if he is in daycare now, hopefully that will make things a little more manageable. I actually still have around 10 days left to use by the end of June - a mix of vacation, personal and administrative leave days, plus I still have a LOT of sick days, since fortunately, I have not had much reason to use them over the past 8+ years - even when I was pregnant and SO sick for 18 weeks!

So, I guess the answer is, I'm looking forward to getting into a routine again, even though Tommy and I have sort of got ourselves into a routine at home too. Early on after coming home with Tommy, I had myself in a panic a few times about how I would ever manage going back to work, getting myself ready, getting us out the door. Pretty silly to have been worrying about that back in September, and eventually I was able to let it go for the most part. Every once in a while I'd think about it, and this week especially I'm thinking about it a LOT more and still wondering how we're going to do it...but I am a lot more confident that we'll get ourselves into some sort of a groove by the end of January. The basketball schedule is not that bad - only 12 games from when I get back through early March, which I will probably work about half or so, though I still have to figure out which games I am working. I have penciled some in but want to coordinate that with my colleagues too since they've covered the first half of the season on their own! I had a great conversation with my boss just before Christmas, who told me to ease back into things that first week especially, and if I need/want to work half days, come in late/leave early, do what I need to do. We do work some wacky hours sometimes because of football and basketball games, so he feels so long as we are getting our work done, that's what matters.

John and I will have to figure out what works for us - fortunately our respective "busy" seasons are pretty much during different times of the year, so we can rotate who does drop off and pick up accordingly. We will both be going on Monday to drop Tommy off in the morning, and I plan to leave work early as well, but John is off on Monday so he can pick him up at any time too.

I know with the change in routine next week it could mess up the GREAT sleeping we've had from Tommy - but we are hoping that is not the case. John and I tell each other every day how LUCKY we are to be BLESSED with such a good baby! Still no rollovers since that one earlier in the month, but TJ is definitely enjoying tummy time more...not all the time but today I had him belly laughing while he was on tummy time as I had a little bee toy buzzing around him that had him in a fit of giggles. Unfortunately did not have the camera handy and I didn't want to ruin the fun by stopping to go and find it. And we've been putting him in his crib a little bit more awake each night so that he can hopefully learn to put himself to sleep. We've actually been doing this since he was in the bassinet, but we would rock him for a while. We've got a few books that we've been reading (The Baby Whisperer, Solving your Child's Sleep Problems - though he doesn't have any) and we feel that this method is what we'd like to try to use.

We still have to pinch ourselves that we have a little boy as we start this new year and decade - we hope that 2010 is a happy one for all of you and for our family as well!