Gnrgh

[radegund]

Oh, for goodness sake. Four weeks can't just have vanished, can they?

I'm back at work. This was day 6, and day 2 with the full-time. I did a few hours a day last week, which was enough to flatten me by Friday - I can't imagine what I'll be like by this weekend. I miss Oisín enormously, but I'm also really happy to be back. Hello, inner conflict.

Same Oisín seems to be taking to the crèche extremely well. He's already noticeably more alert, adventurous and talkative. He can now roll over from front to back (in one direction), and reach for things while on his front. Last night he may have babbled (in the child-language-acquisition sense), but he was yelling at the time so we're not sure.

The midwinter festivities were great fun and utterly exhausting. We partied hard (well ... for some definition thereof, allowing for the baby thing) until the 28th, and then hibernated. Didn't even do anything special on New Year's Eve. It was lovely.

Some posts I might have written, if I'd been organised:

16 December: Took my beautiful, trusting, happy, healthy baby to the doctor, and held him down so that she could stab a large needle deep into the muscle of his thigh, then turned him round and let her do it again on the other side. I don't know if he'll ever forgive me. Immunisation shots are teh_traumatic.

22 December: Fuck this for a lark. Next year I am getting all my Christmas shopping done in November.

23 December: Partyyyyyyyyyyyyy! (It rocked. People turned up early, as requested; Oisín entertained his adoring fans, and met his new third cousin; much fun was had by all; the last guests helped us clear up; and we were in bed by 2:00. How cool is that? Yeah, yeah, priorities shift when you haven't had an uninterrupted night's sleep since 21 August, OK?)

24 December, 23:40: Ohhhhhhhhhh, pretty! It's an iPod mini. And it's bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue. And it has a sentimental message engraved on it, which induceth the warm fuzzy feeling. Verily, niallm gives good tech.

25 December: SNOW!!! Also, tummy bug knocks niallm for six; boo. We go to my parents' house, where Niall crawls into a spare bed and Oisín and I participate in the Christmas Dinner Thing, complete with Chinese whispers and (later) charades.

27 December: Oisín leaves the jurisdiction for the first time, off up north to meet the Bellie Rellies, including the Very Scary Great-Grandad, who is charming and goodnatured throughout. The standard greeting to Oisín is "How about you, big lad?", which is a new one on me.

31 December: Oh, look, it's a year since the positive pregnancy test.

3 January: Well, back to work tomorrow. End of inner life for the moment, I suspect. While on leave, I wrote 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo (incoherent drivel, but let's not split hairs), translated a play, submitted poems to a competition, and wrote a short story and submitted it to a magazine. And I don't think I neglected my baby...

4 January: It's the end of the world as we know it. My cosy life as a full-time mother comes to a sudden stop. Leaving Oisín at the crèche was upsetting. Granted, I came back less than two hours later to find him happily examining a rattle, but there was almost a physical ache as I walked away for the first time. It was unexpectedly good, though, to climb the interminable stairs to my office and be welcomed back. I think I'm doing the right thing.

7 January: On phone to Niall: "I just collected our son from the crèche, and we don't have to give him back until Monday! Hooray!" The Girls tell me he stares intently at them while they're feeding the other babies their spoo. We reckon we'll have to introduce him to the wonders of solid food very soon.

8 January: OMG squee! Tooth! Tooth! Yay! (Ow.)

10 January: First full day at work. This is going to be tough until I get used to the loss of my morning nap. On the plus side, pumping milk is proving easy, which is a huge relief. I hope it stays this way. There's lots and lots to do in the immediate term, and I'm slowly getting my head around it. It's good to be back.

Comments

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Creche already! Oh, he's growing up so fast!

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, indeed he is. It struck me today, All Melodramatic Like, that this is the beginning of the Great Separation: the newborn closeness is over.

(On a separate note, did I hear rumours of Dublin in February? Did I? Did I? And might it be around the 12th? Might it? Might it? *puppy-dog eyes*)

[biascut.livejournal.com]

It might, it very well might! Though there's still rather a lot of admin to be done first - how? where? with whom? - not to mention essential shoe-buying, so I'm not quite at the promising stage...

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Well, it would be excessively cool if it happened.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

wouldn't it just!

[jeejeen.livejournal.com]

Yay! Hello! Inner conflict sure, but return of the LJ, yes!

Also, for a non-Irish speaker like meself, how would one pronounce your bonny boy's name?

[niallm.livejournal.com]

Ush-een...

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Hello! Jeebus knows I wish I had more time to devote to the LJ ... I'm barely keeping up with reading my f-list, let alone posting. Must engage in time theft!

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I think I ask Helen that every. single. time. I speak to her. Fortunately, she has not yet got bored and shouted at me. But my natural instinct is to be all French about it and say Wazz-een, like oiseau. And I know that's wrong, but it always makes me horribly paranoid about what's actually right.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yes, we did wonder if we were saddling him with a baleful burden of a name (wazz-een, oy-zin...). That's one of the reasons we gave him John as a middle name, actually - so he'll have something to fall back on.

[jeejeen.livejournal.com]

AH! That's exactly how I always pronounce it in my head: Wazz-een!

Although sometimes I think about how funny it would be to call him Hoisin, like the sauce.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Oy-veh! What have we done? Sorry, son :-)

[kasku.livejournal.com]

Tooth? I wish Indigo's would hurry up - I'm bored of sore gums! One-way rolling - aren't their expressions classic? : )

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Oh, classic altogether! He just looks so smug when he manages it. (Although that's giving way to blasé as he gets better at it.)

He thought about the tooth for a good six or seven weeks before it came through. In the end, it was trouble-free. We just woke up on Saturday morning to find it there. It's bloody sharp.

[kasku.livejournal.com]

Oh, ouch. Maybe I shouldn't wish for it then. : )

[oddcellist.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh! So fast! Welcome back to work, and - wow, you got a lot done during your leave... am most certainly in awe.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yes, it is a lot, when I list it like that. There's definitely a part of me that wouldn't at all mind being a full-time writer/mother. But then there's the part that's glad to be back at work ... ho hum.

By the way, I'm not sure that we ever thanked you for the most excellent card you sent us way back when the baba was born. We were really touched. The boy's coin collection now amounts to three items, the other two being an Irish pound coin (discontinued with the introduction of the euro) and a British gold sovereign dated 1884, which used to belong to my grandmother. Numismatism beckons!

[ainetl.livejournal.com]

happy to see you posting again. back to work? it seems so quick. i can't even imagine - now how old is Oisín? i had to go back to work when my daughter was 12 wks :( .

sounds like things have been going well and the holidays were reasonably ok. ooh, mini ipod - i want one.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Oisín will be five months old a week from tomorrow. This is incomprehensible to me. If I'd had to go back when he was 12 weeks, I'd be in much worse shape now. As it is, I was actually looking forward to going back, and it's been good, so far...

[ainetl.livejournal.com]

omg i just don't understand how time can fly like that! read your post today and was happy to hear that you made it thru the week ok.

12 weeks was a little too early to go back, i would have liked to stay home longer. but i was on bed-rest and missed so much work before she was born that i really couldn't push my luck past the legal time they have to hold my job. (if it wasn't for clinton it wouldn't even be that long - have to love american policies...)