Happy New Year!
The new year is always filled with exciting promise of what lays ahead. Unfortunately this year it was also meant my return to work after over twelve months off. I’ve been dreading this day for a very long time but also working toward it, dropping Ollie’s feeds, going in for short visits etc. so that he would be in the best position to hit the ground running.
Nick has been really wonderful and has taken these first three days off work to allow Ollie to do half days and also to enable me to get back into the work groove without us fighting for the mirror or iron in the mornings.
Surprisingly it wasn’t as hard as I anticipated. I suspect this is largely because Nick was the one to drop Ollie off while I just had to deal with getting myself back to work. I don’t think the experience was exactly a walk in the park for Nick but thankfully when he went to pick him up later in the day, Ollie was having such a good time that he didn’t even notice Nick had returned. Check out the pic of him loving the new toys they have for him to play with.
As for me, I’m coming to grips with my new role as working mum. I’m hardly the first person to do it and I won’t be the last. I’m just lucky to have been able to have as much time off as I have. I think the turning point was when I realised that my work and my role as Ollie’s mum are not mutually exclusive. I can sing nursery rhymes with him, bake and sew him cool clothes AS WELL as sending people to jail!
And in a twisted kind of way I got a little (alright, a lot) excited about being able to make lists and be organised again.
My highlight of the day, other than coming home to Nick and Ollie, was definitely popping out at lunch for sushi and buying a new pair of shoes all on my own. No pram needing to be pushed around the shops.
Thanks to everyone who sent me kind messages about today. It meant a lot to know that so many people were thinking of us. But it all went well and we’ll get through it. Plus we are now one day closer to our next holiday!!!
We’ve had a really lovely week of activities between Christmas and returning to work. It is always that wonderful time of year when people are kicking up their heels a bit and you get the return of friends who have moved away but are lured back by the family Christmas (maybe not by choice, maybe they would prefer to be sipping cocktails with paper umbrellas in them on a tropical beach, just maybe).
A lovely tradition we have had going since 2003 is the ‘Urban Family Christmas’ which takes place on Boxing Day or the day after and doesn’t involve a single slice of turkey or glazed ham. What it does involve is getting together with lots of friends, perhaps watching some cricket, but definitely drinking some beer. We used to have this at our great apartment but since moving to the burbs and sprogging up we have to find other venues and this year was a pub. Ollie stayed with Nanna Carmel and was on his best sleeping behaviour, allowing us to kick up our heels till past the time Cinderella’s coach turns back into a pumpkin.
We backed this up two nights later with a lovely dinner at Cloudland with our friends Aman and Alice and their local posse. The company was great and the food was superb (as were the cocktails). I actually got to have my favourite combination of meals – beef for an entree and beef for a main. Yummo. Luckily they didn’t have a beef dessert.
Even more food was devoured a couple of days later with a yummy peking duck lunch with Rachel & Christian. This time Ollie joined us and was a pretty good sport for the majority of the time. If we hadn’t decided to order more entrees after lunch (but they were so good) he probably would have been perfectly well behaved.
I’m thinking it might just be time to lay off the food for a while.
And finally, the birthday celebrations have begun. Ollie got his first present from Sam, Alan and Audrey. It is a totally cool wooden pirate ship which might be a teeny bit grown up for Ollie to play with but it isn’t too grown up for me to play with. Plus Ollie likes to look at it (making his ‘I want’ noise which sounds kind of like “ooh hoo” everytime he sees stuff he wants).
Ollie enjoyed opening his pressie and was a little better after all the practice at Christmas but it was nice of Audrey to help him out.
Comments
Post a Comment