What a week. It was SO long and SO short at the same time. My first week back in the office, full-time. Well, working full time, but not all in the office.

Now that I have somewhere to be every morning at 8:30, our schedule has by necessity changed somewhat. Namely, I have a bedtime for the first time in over two decades. Roughly an hour after we aim to have Kieran in bed, I aim to be in bed. Making it on time is harder than I expected.

I’m off work (supposedly) at 2:00 – not that I actually left the office before 2:30 at all this week. Home around 3:00, I take Kieran from Paul who (understandably) is in need of a break. Daddy gets a break, Mama gets her snuggles – everybody’s happy. The next four hours are filled with bottles, diapers, baths, and Mama trying to get some work done before Kieran’s bedtime at 7:00. Oh, and trying to make dinner for us in there too. Once Kieran finally goes down, we scarf dinner and try to wind down for bed.

Kieran has settled into a fairly regular sleeping pattern of a 4-ish hour stint, a 3-ish hour stint, and then however long it is until 5:00am. He’s up for an hour or so at a time for a bottle and diaper change – both of which I take with the goal of keeping Kieran quiet so Paul can sleep through the night. He’s stuck with the 5:00am wakeup call, so 6-8 hours of straight through shut-eye is the least I can do for him. I get three 2-3 hour naps over the course of the night, which works OK for me. I have developed the Mama-skill of sleeping lightly and being up and out of bed at the first squawk from the crib in the nursery.

At work, things are going very well. We’re crazy busy right now for the end of the fiscal year, which helps me by keeping me too busy to think about anything else. I’m also helped because Paul had the great idea that I re-do the cork boards in my office with pictures of Kieran – so I’m surrounded with pictures of my boys all the time I’m in my office.

I hadn’t originally planned to work a modified schedule when I went back to work, but I am SO glad that my supervisors assumed I would. (Prolly has something to do with the fact that they’re both fathers…) After having worked one week, I can’t imagine trying to put in full days, 5 days a week right now. I continue to be grateful that my work is flexible about this kind of stuff.

We’re still working out the kinks, and we’re both exhausted by turns – but this is life right now. I am SO incredibly happy that Kieran isn’t going to daycare right now. I know we’ll have to deal with that at some point when Paul gets a job again, but for now I revel in the fact that Kieran is home with his daddy every day.