School Days...and Work Days

Yesterday was my first day back to work from maternity leave, and consequently it was Weston's first day of  "school".  As much as I prepared, I still felt so rushed and crazy trying to get myself and Weston ready to head out the door.  It was Tuesday, so that meant that it was Rolland's "early day" and he left for work before me.  I was able to get up and get myself ready no problem, but then the little guy needed to be dressed (in something cute and school-worthy), fed, his bottles packed, his bag packed...my bag packed, my pump packed (with cooler for milk storage), my white coat dusted off and pockets reloaded with pens that work.  So here I am carrying Weston, his bottle propped up by his burp cloth...trying to fix myself something to eat, while packing the various bags...and oh, yeah I needed something for myself for lunch.  The one thing that I could do one handed - make a great cup of coffee with my Keurig brew station (again, thank you Mom for an awesome Christmas gift). 

After running around our house like a chicken with my head cut off, I buckled the baby in his car seat, ran upstairs to finish getting dressed (the last thing I do to prevent looking like someone who snuggled her cat), loaded our five-plus bags into the car, and loaded Weston into the back seat.  Thanks to Rolland I had my mirror installed so I could see baby's cute little face in my rear-view.  Once we got to school we were greeted with smiles for the "new baby"...Weston's arrival was quite anticipated by the teachers.  I didn't know whether to take him out of his seat or let him sleep (I could have used an extra half hour myself).  His teachers couldn't leave him in his seat though...everyone wanted to love on my cute little guy.  The reassured me that he would be fine and that I could come back anytime or call to check on him if it made me feel better.  Now, I am not one to cry about this sort of thing or be neurotic by calling to check in on my boy, but I did get to visit for 5 minutes on my way from one clinic to the other.

That first day Weston was the angel baby at school. Everyone loved on him, they kept him awake all day so he would sleep good at night, and of course he ate all of his food with every bottle.  At home it was a totally different story.  I no sooner go him out of his car seat and he started to scream.  I tried to hold off his feeding for the usual 3 hour mark, but caved and fed him half an hour early. I wanted to fix dinner, but instead we opted for left-overs to go with our screaming baby.  We skipped bath-time all together because I didn't want to cause him any more distress.  I could tell he was so tired and he just kept fussing for a solid three hours. Finally he took his last feed and went to bed.  Needless to say, I "encouraged" daycare to put him down for a longer nap at least once during the day to try to "reset" his  little clock and help him rest.  Today my little guy took a better nap, and he was so much more pleasant at home.  He ate dinner, played in his tub, dozed off to sleep and went to bed without a fuss.  Fantastic.  Hopefully tomorrow, we'll do it all again.