My husband and I went out without the baby for a little bit on New Year's Eve. This was a somewhat challenging task. We don't have family in town, and my mom lives way out in the sticks. We wanted to go see a movie, but I'm a total movie snob. If I'm paying nearly $10 a ticket, it had better be good. As a result, we really only go to the theater if I'm pretty certain I won't be disappointed. (Though there have been a few upsets--The Happening, I'm looking at you.)
That being the case, I was dead set on Black Swan as our movie choice.
Of course, it wasn't showing in the closest movie theater to my mom's house (20 minutes away). The closest place I could see it was 40 minutes from my mom. That meant we had to drive to my mom's house (1 hour 15 minutes), drive to the theater (40 minutes), drive back to my mom's (40 minutes), and then drive back home (1 hour 15 minutes). This is a lot of work for a movie.
But I'm glad we did it. It was a great movie, and it was nice to get out of the house. I fed my daughter at my mom's house right before we left and left her 6 ounces of breastmilk, thinking there was no way she'd use it all in the five hours or so we'd be gone. I called after the movie, and everything was great, so we decided to grab some dinner, too. As we were getting the check and heading back towards my mom's, she called to say she was going to feed her the last 3 ounces. When I got there about 45 minutes later, those were gone and my daughter was yelling for more, so I fed her again. Considering her habits in the day after this, I'm pretty sure that was the start of a growth spurt. I certainly hope she doesn't need to eat that much every time I leave her, or I'm never going to be able to pump enough while I'm at work.
So, now that 2011 is here, I have a lot on my mind. I start back to work two weeks from today (20 hours a week; then 40 hours a week five weeks after that). I called the daycare today to get things squared away, and it made it all seem very real. I have a lot to think about and even more to do in the next two weeks. Since this is coinciding with the new year, I'm also thinking about my longer-term goals. Here, in no particular order, are the things on my mind:
1) Figuring out the daycare logistics: who's doing drop-offs, how many bottles do I need to pack, am I supposed to label everything, what else do I need to bring, what stays there, what do I take back and forth
2) Finishing my syllabi for the classes I'm teaching
3) Figuring out how in the world I'm going to get this sporadically sleeping baby out the door at a set time each morning
4) Losing the baby weight
5) Making some headway on my PhD reading list (including creating the half of the list that I have control over)
6) Finishing a paper for a class that I took an incomplete in last semester (the last day of the class was on my due date--the day I went into labor)
7) Making myself presentable to the outside world: haircut, unpacking clothes that were put away while I was pregnant and seeing what (if anything) fits
8) A new budget for our new life with baby
Wow. Writing it all out like that, it's no wonder I'm feeling a little overwhelmed.
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