Diaries of a working stay-at-home mom

The main benefit of my job is that I get to be home with Farrah. She is my reason "why." Every appointment I hold and phone call I make is to ensure that I get to be home with her. However recently, as I mentioned in a previous post, I started putting her in daycare one day a week. Every Thursday I drop her off at daycare in the morning and pick her up in the evening. I'll admit, it's very hard for me to do. I'm selfish like that I guess :) But I know she needs to get past this clingy, scream my head off when mommy leaves phase. It also allows me one solid, uninterrupted day of work and we need a financial boost so it's helping us a lot. I have to tell you, I've never accomplished so much in one day as I have the past few Thursdays. I know it's because in the back of my mind I'm thinking "If I'm going to be away from my baby, I better get as much out of this day as I possibly can." I line up back to back appointments, make phone calls, catch up on emails and usually find time to squeeze one chore in before I go pick her back up. She's been hit or miss with how it goes at daycare. There's been times she's been totally fine, there's been times when I get a report that she cried the majority of the day (insert mommy heartbreak here), there's been days when she's a combination of both.
This was one of the first difficult mommy decisions I've had to make and although it's tough, I know it's the right choice. Because I'm able to accomplish so much on those Thursdays, I feel like the rest of the days when I'm home with her, I can really enjoy her so much more because I'm present. I'm not thinking about what I have to get done, or checking my emails while watching her out of the corner of my eye.
Yesterday, Abe was working and I had a Mary Kay party scheduled at 1pm at my house which was perfect because she was napping while it was going on. When everyone left, I put my sweatpants on and spent the rest of the day crawling around with her, I let her pull every blanket out from under her crib, all of my underwear out of my underwear drawer and all her clothes out of the bottom couple of drawers. Then we read pretty much every book we have. Then we went to Rubio's for dinner and I shared my bean and cheese burrito with her. This is one of her favorite treats. She loves cheesey tortilla and beans and guac. (who doesn't really?)
When it was time to put her to bed, it was the first time I can ever remember that I was dreading putting her to bed because I wanted to keep playing with her. I'm usually so tired myself that I look forward to putting her down for the night and having a few hours peace. It reassured me that I've made the right choices for myself and my family. It was a good day.

Walk walkin

She officially took her first steps! It was so fast and took me by surprise that I didn't even have time to react let alone take a picture or grab the video camera. She was standing in our room hanging on to the corner of our bed and I was sitting on the floor a couple feet away and the cat was over by me and I was petting her so I think that must have been her bait. All of a sudden she just let go and took 2 steps towards me and then stumbled and I caught her. I guess she was just ready. Now I've been having her stand and then letting go. For the most part she either takes one step and then sits, or she just sits. I think it might be a while before she's walking all over the place but for now, a few steps here or there is fine. The picture of her in the black shirt with the pink pants was taken just afterwards (She didn't pee all over herself, she spilt her water all over.) I felt like I had to memorialize it somehow. The rest are just randome pics from the last month or so including one of me and hubbs on a recent date night. I'm hoping to post some video of our girl walking very soon!

14 months

A few days late on this one. I've really been slacking on taking pictures. It's like, her first 6 months there was always a camera in my hands, the next 6 months when she did something cute I grabbed my cell phone and used the camera to take a quick pic, and now I don't even know where my camera is. This pic is one of the few I have taken recently and it is one of my new faves. Her face just melts my heart. She is such a sweet little girl.

I can't believe my little itsy bitsy peanut that came home from the hospital is now 14 months. Here's what's new with Miss 14-month-old Farrah:

-Still not walking on her own, although she walks all over if we're holding her hands, if she's got her little push cart toy, or if she's holding on to some piece of furniture. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before she is.

-Lucky for us she never took a pacifier so we don't have to go through the process of getting her off of one. As soon as she turned one we started weaning her off the bottle and we did it relatively quickly so I'm proud to say we are a bottle free family!

-No more formula either, only whole cow's milk. She doesn't particularly love it or hate it. She'll drink a little bit, but doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as her formula.

-Loves these mini cheese raviolis I get from Trader Joe's. I have to limit them to a 2-3 times per week. She would have them every meal if I offered it. Also loves bananas, puff cereal, sweet potatoes, apples with peanut butter, yogurt, carrot juice (but not carrots), peas, corn and turkey meatballs. She's a good eater. Definitely her dad's kid (who am I kidding, I love to eat too!)

-Sleeps from about 8pm-6:30 everyday with a 2 hour nap from about 12:30-2:30.

-Says mama, sometimes dada, and pretty much everything else is "ca" or "ga" or somewhere in between the two. We started several months ago pointing to our cats and saying "cat" and then she caught on and started pointing and saying "ca" and so now everything is "ca." I hoping she starts learning other words soon. "Ca" is starting to get old.

-She knows where her eyes, mouth, nose and toes are and if you ask her to point to them she will.

-Loves to read, loves our walks to the park followed by the swing at the park.

A funny story to sum up what a big girl she has become...

We decided to put Farrah in a home daycare one day a week. We felt she needed the socialization because she would cry non-stop when I would leave and I didn't want my kid to be "that kid." Plus it's allowing me one extra day to work and right now we need the $ so I figured I would be willing to sacrifice one day a week with my baby if it meant she would become more independent and I could contribute to our income. So I found a mom through my mom's club that does a home daycare. She's very nice and Thursday's she only has 2 other babies close in age to Farrah so I thought Thursday's would be perfect. Last Thursday was her first day. We were starting her with only a partial day instead of a full day to ease her into it. I always hear from working moms what a hard time they have going back to work and here I am so fortunate that I can make this choice and it's only one day a week and yet I was still a little sad about it. I knew she's be fine I was just going to miss her. So Thursday morning comes and Abe drops her off because I had a facial scheduled (probably better that way so I didn't turn into a hot mess when I had to leave). He said she did fine and he was able to sneak out without her noticing. I go to pick her up about 4 1/2 hours later and expect her to squeal with delight when she sees me and come crawling over, and instead when I walk in I see her sitting on the floor with 2 other babies playing with some toys and she looks up and sees me and then looks back down and continues playing as if I wasn't even there. Can you believe that? Here I was worrying that she was having a meltdown the whole time I was gone and she didn't even notice my presence or lack thereof!

All I could do was laugh. I guess we are doing something right. What an independent, smart, little toddler she's turning into. I love her love her love her.