Life in North Park

My feelings about going back to work have changed drastically since my last entry regarding work. This morning, I was driving to work with an immense sense of joy and relief. I do feel kind of guilty at feeling this way after leaving my baby at home, but I am so happy at the setup we have that I think my guilt is unwarranted. It took a couple of weeks for me to feel comfortable not worrying about Lupe being capable of taking care of Axel the way I thought he should. But she continues to be a total blessing to us. Johan is still home with Axel on Mondays, and we both love that situation. Johan is such an amazing Dad.

Before Axel was born, one of the engineer moms at my work and I were talking about going back to work after having a baby. She told me that she thought that some moms were better moms when they stayed at home, and some moms were better moms after going back to work. I didn't really understand this at the time, but now I think I do. I think every mom is at her best when she is doing what she feels she was made to do. Some moms were made to be full time moms. And some moms also have other purposes outside of being a mom. I feel like since I get a couple of days each week to use my brain in ways that make me happy at work, I am so much more energized to be a good mom to Axel the days that I'm home. On the other hand, if I had stayed at my previous job where I was miserable, this would be a different situation and I would for sure be a full time stay at home mom!

Tomorrow we're going to put in an application for Axel's first school! We are thinking of putting him into a Montessori school that's a block away from my work. If we sign Axel up, he'll start in the fall, when he's 18 months old. At that time, I'll go back to work full time. I would love to hear if anyone has had any experiences with Montessori schools. Until then, we're hoping to stick to having Lupe as our part-time nanny.

Axel is crazy right now, but he is a pure joy to us. He is still army crawling and for the first time went from crawling to a sitting position. He is just starting to understand that he can crawl on his knees, but isn't totally there yet. He has started learning to pull himself up to a standing position and is climbing anything and everything that is 6" tall.....stairs, the guitar, the dishwasher, etc.

We had a Dr. appointment the other day. I was worried that he wasn't growing as much because he stopped nursing and drinking milk for a while. I took him to the doctor because I didn't know what to do. He weighed 23 lbs 3 oz and was 30 inches long. She said that since he was eating so healthy, I should just make sure he gets enough iron, protein, and calcium each day, along with water to not get dehydrated. A couple of days in a row he drank 10 oz or less, he just wouldn't have it. So he basically weaned himself. We were forced to switch to formula really fast since it was hard to thaw frozen breastmilk every time, plus, we were wasting it, having to throw it away since he wouldn't drink much of it. We had to try different methods to get him to drink his formula. We tried keeping the lights off and his room quiet so to not distract him, I tried letting distractions happen, we tried giving him a bottle in the car, nothing worked. Finally, Lupe told me that she was giving him his bottle in his crib. I tried it, and he took it! He'd just lay down and drink the whole 8 oz! So that's what we do now when he wakes from a nap, give him a bottle and let him be until he's done. Now he's taken a liking to formula, and he's finally starting to drink an entire bottle 3 times per day.

He's still sleeping like a champ. He naps twice per day, 1.5 to 2 hours per nap, then goes to bed around 6-6:30 pm and wakes up around 6:45 a.m. But he still only has his two lower teeth! He looks so funny because they're growing longer and longer like little bunny teeth.

He also wants to be everywhere we are. He'll play on his own in his bedroom, but then he'll make his way to the kitchen and beg to be picked up. He's also extremely bored with our house. We don't really have any baby toys. But this is because he gets bored with his toys so fast and he's more interested in real things in the house. So we usually give him some bowls or cooking utensils, the guitar, etc. to play with. He likes getting into the refrigerator because it's new for now. His favorite thing is to get into areas he wasn't able to before, like the dishwasher, the cupboards, or climb up the kitchen chairs. But after about a half hour of this, he's done with the house and we have to go outside. He likes to crawl around in the garden, and sometimes we'll go next door to Helen and Nia's grass yard and crawl around there. He loves our neighbor, Suzanne's, house, because she has clutter everywhere and it's so much fun to explore.

We recently decided that we wanted to sell our house. Our interest rate is pretty high, and our accountant has been telling us for years to get out of it if we can. We think that we can break even if we sell it, so we've been fixing it up to prepare. Johan has painted all the interior doors, the fence, and we had the house painted as well. But after all of this, the house looks pretty wonderful that we think we might want to stay! Plus, we do really love North Park. This sounds silly, but I feel like it keeps us young! It has character, and we have cool bars, cafes, restaurants, clothing stores, the zoo, the park, etc. that we can walk to or get to quickly. And so many of our friends live nearby that we can meet up at eachothers houses in minutes. Just yesterday I was going shopping and felt so liberated to be able to call up my girlfriends, Lisa and Natalie, and see if they wanted to go shopping with me. We ended up going out for lunch afterwards at Influx in Golden Hill and it was such a great spur of the moment afternoon with them. I love our friends. So we decided to try one more time to see if we can refinance, and it looks like there are some possibilities that we're waiting to hear back on. We will most likely want to move when Axel is at the kindergarten age, but that's years down the road. We'll see....

Johan and his friend, Doug, have been brewing beer as well. They made some good dark ale that was ready last week. Johan found a nice refrigerator/freezer on Craigslist that fit nicely in the garage, so he put the beer in a keg that the Kellers gave us, and put it in the fridge....perfect! Then he had another idea of making our side yard into a beer garden. He wanted to copy Garrett Keller's idea of drilling a hole through the fridge for the beer tap. But instead of stopping there, he wants to drill a hole in the side of the garage and install a tap out in the beer garden. So when we're sitting outside, we'll have beer on tap. I figure that it's a small hole that's easy to fill in afterward. Plus, I'm kind of excited at the thought of a beer garden. More on that to come....