This month's mommy blog entry!

Seriously, I am not doing so hot updating my own blog. Oh well. I think Owen's life is more exciting than mine at this point. Actually, right now I am at work! Like a grownup! There are other adults here with which to converse! Unfortunately this is Brian's lab, not mine, so I only know two people here. Thus, not a lot of conversing going on.

I was planning on going back to work starting yesterday (8 weeks of leave) but as D-day approached, I realized that I was not really ready to go back. The Bug is still so little! And I cannot bear the thought of not being with him! This is quite a turnaround from how I thought I would be feeling right now, which is: bored of being at home and starved for adult contact. Well, I am a bit starved for adult contact, that is for sure. But I am not as dying to get out of the house as I thought I would be.

So I am taking 4 additional weeks off and will start back to work the last week of March. At that point, Brian and I will alternate Owen-shifts for about a month, because we didn't get a daycare spot until May 7th (I'm happy we got one at all, frankly). That will be a good way to ease back into things. At the moment I am doing some work at home and some at Brian's lab, trying to do additional experiments to get my paper published somewhere. Brian's lab has all the equipment I need, and is much closer to home and also Owen-friendly, if we both need to be here. We brought Owen in this weekend, in fact.

Not too much else is going on. We are settling into being parents. The Bug and I are getting on a bit of a schedule, which is good because then I can sometimes find the time to shower (You only have to read this, not smell me. Be grateful for that). And, as you will have seen on his blog, he slept all night for the first time! Hurrah!

I am always shocked by how much we love our little Bug. Everyone said that would be the case, but it didn't seem real to me until it actually happened. I can't wait to see what he's like as he gets older. Its going so fast.

Additional:

I got a Wii! Brian has been trying to get me one for a while w/o paying an exorbitant amount for it. What worked: mid-week eBay purchase. I haven't had a chance to play it much though, but I did quickly try out the Wii Sports games. So cool. I got the Zelda game too but have not started it yet.

I give up.

Britney? This is the last straw. You and me are OVER (although I will always love the song 'Toxic', no matter how bad things get between us).

A miracle!

A miracle has occurred at our house. On Saturday AND Sunday night, Owen slept for 7-8 hours STRAIGHT. Holy crap. My mom asked if I thought he was dead when I realized he hadn't woken me up sooner, but I hadn't noticed because I was still asleep. Because this sleeping stretch went from the 7:30 pm feeding to 3 am. Then he slept for another couple of hours, until 6 or 6:30. Owen's a bit of a morning person. Of course, last night he woke up at 1 am like normal. I'm hoping the long sleep comes back tonight! We've begun swaddling him at night and for naps again, and I think that helps.

Here are a few things we did in Florida:
1. Flamingos in Sarasota Jungle Gardens. Also we fed the flamingos.


When flamingos attack on Vimeo
2. Circus Sarasota quick change artists. These are not as good as the ones who performed last time I went to Circus Sarasota, but still are pretty good. We were sitting in the front row both times, and I'll be damned if I can figure out how they do a lot of this.


Circus on Vimeo
3. Kayaking in the Myakka river. I left Owen with Brian and my mom and went kayaking with my dad. The Myakka river is chock full-o-gators so I was very excited about that. When we put the kayaks in there was one gator on the opposite bank. We had to paddle a little way and then portage over a small dam, and there were twelve gators on the bank over there. Then we hardly saw any others for the rest of the trip. There was one point where there were three around us and they all went underwater at the same time. Thats a little scary. The worst problem I had was with all the spiders in my boat. I'm lucky I didn't flip the kayak over with all of my wriggling. I stepped on one, I caught one on the end of my paddle (this required some panicky manuvering that I'm really glad didn't end up in a wet Lisa), I flicked some more off with my fingernail. We saw a lot of birds, herons, egrets, ibis and hawks, and we saw some limpkin at the end.

This is what happens when you mix 60 year old men with white water rafting.

Brian's parents are on a big trip around the world. They've been all sorts of places so far, and are currently in... New Zealand? Or Australia? One of those two. Anyhow. They recently went white water rafting which is totally fun and I would love to do again sometime if anyone wants to take me. The only problem with white water rafting is when you hit a rock and get bumped out of the boat. An even worse problem is when you do this very early on in the trip, so you have to spend the rest of the ride with a gaping wound.

Poor Brian's dad! Hope that heals by the time they get here (we're the last stop on the tour), or he's going to scare Owen half to death, haha.