Working a Full Day

Today I worked as a designer a little over 8 hours for the first time since September 11. I'm working on two maps right now that will be cut into floor puzzles made from soft foam material used as play mats for kids at a museum. Speaking of those, we recently bought an ABC's one at Lowes to use on our hardwood floors for Liam when he starts learning to crawl, walk, and rolling around even more than he is now.

The beauty of working at home is being able to break the time up to fit my schedule (or Liam's). This small firm is not strict at all about me having to be available particular hours, but I still keep my phone around and constantly check email during the normal business hours and then work on the projects for blocks of time throughout the day and evening. I found a really cool free program that lets me create and send invoices, while letting me keep track of my time as well.

From around 2-5pm, Liam got to nap in my lap and feed whenever he wanted to (he seemed to be cluster feeding today, after playing more and not eating as often yesterday). All the extra cuddle and feeding time in the afternoon seemed to pay off in the evening, as he went to bed easily much to my surprise. He was even hiccuping and kicking around when I left the room, but by the time the music went off on the soother I could hear on the monitor he had gone to sleep. (Thank you Liam!) The 8-9pm range is definitely his preferred bedtime at least for now.

We learned the hard way back last Saturday night, whatever you do, do not interfere with Liam's preferred bedtime. We had been out running errands and got home a little later than expected right after 8pm. Liam had dozed off in the car, and was sleeping soundly by the time we carried him in the house. The problem was, he was not in his pajamas or his nighttime cloth diaper. He had not had his bedtime feeding, nor had he had a bath (and he had not had a bath since Wednesday because of evening activities that had us out of the house Thursday and Friday, so it was more of a priority than usual). I decided to try waking him up. I gave him a bath, then tried to do his normal bedtime routine. I quickly figured out this was a very BAD idea though, as he refused to settle down. I was thankful he never really got fussy, but he was just plain wired. I resorted to trying to rock him to sleep in the car seat without avail, and trying to nurse him to sleep. He was partying until midnight, and didn't calm down until we turned off all lights and went to bed ourselves. Then a storm came through, so it woke him back up. But, at least he was calmer and nursed back to sleep. We will not be doing that again!

In other news, I have an interview for the full-time position doing magazine design this Thursday from 8-11am. I am not looking forward to getting up that early and dealing with morning rush hour traffic again, but at least it gets it out of the way. Any prayers are appreciated for that, particularly for their selection process. I am hoping Liam will be a good baby for Michael during that time, and that he will get a good feeding in before I leave.