60 Day Warranty

Mea culpa.
I have been very bad about posting lately. For what its worth, had a bit of a change in the schedule. Went back to work last week.
Uh huh.
Generally speaking, it wasn't all that horrible. I believe it was made easier due to two factors. 1) I was only working at the office half days and "working" from home the other half. 2) Finn still isn't in daycare.
The original plan was to take the full 12 weeks available to me through FMLA. However, in order to get paid for said leave, I was going to have to use all my vacation, sick and personal time to cover the leave. Well, do the maths there kiddies -- even at a slightly reduced work week (our official work week is 37.5 hours) I was going to need 450 hours to cover the whole leave as paid. And I only had about 6 weeks of that built up -- roughly 225 hours. I did get another week or so donated, but the bottom line was I had to come back.
Momma needs to get paid.
So I sucked it up and jumped back into the crazy current we call the workforce.
Don't get me wrong - I never had any visions of becoming June Cleaver and turning into a stay-at-home-mom. Not my scene. And the maternity leave confirmed that for me. And don't read that as any sort of indictment against stay-at-home-moms. If that is your gig -- knock it out of the park. I firmly believe that in order to be a great mom, girlfriend, friend, sister (fill in any other appropriate descriptors) that I need to be working. I need the stimulation, the engagement and the adult conversation. Not to mention, I have worked my ass off to get where I am with my professional life. I love what I do and I am good at it.
**steps off soapbox**
So back to work I went. And found myself in fairly unknown territory -- at work with nothing to do. HUH??
Seems my boss didn't quite figure out what he wanted to do with me, so I spent my first week back sorting through emails. Which was actually needed. Well, sorta. I have two work email accounts. I had roughly 1800 between the two of them. Now riddle me this... you know I am not here, why on earth are you sending me email? Not gonna respond. So I deleted all the emails from Jan & Feb and just focused on March.
The closest thing I can equate it to is starting a new job. It was like that except I knew everyone and had a rough idea of what I should have been doing, but wasn't.
Good emailin' times.
This now means that I should have much more "adult" content to be reporting on. And no, I don't mean like THAT sort of adult content, but not so baby-centric in my musings.

Which segues to my baby topic -- Mr. Finn turned 2 months last week. This means, like the good parents we are, it was time for another Drs. appt. This also meant shots. He aced the physical with current stats as follows:
Weight: 12 lbs 10 oz (gain of almost 2.5 lbs in a month and tracks him at 75th percentile)
Length: 22.5 In (gain of 1/2 inch. Tracks him at 50th percentile)
Head: 16 cm (tracking him at 75th percentile)
This all means that my dreams of having a tall kid were probably just that, dreams. And that in reality, he will probably just be average height and have a huge noggin'. But he will be cute dammit.
Then he got shots. Boo. I made Joe hold him for them. But he did ok. I will say that we now know what the pain scream sounds like.
He is also starting to talk up a storm. Of course, by talking I mean his version thereof. But when he gets going, he clearly has something on his mind. I just have yet to effectively been able to translate the oohs and aahs into something that we can understand. Time will tell on that one. But I think he is going to be a talker. Which I don't understand. I mean neither Joe or I are talkers.
Oh wait.
Did you sense the sarcasm? No? How about now?
Good.
We are doomed. The kid talks in his sleep.

So aside from the small drama of going back to work, things are good. We are getting back to (or redefining?) life as usual. I just have to remember to NOT be the parent that talks about poop and we will be fine. I caught myself being that parent last week -- and had to stop. Thanks to Beth and Carissa for putting up with the rambling prior to me catching myself.
Ok- back to it.

Now Listening: When the Pawn.... by Fiona Apple

So much to say

What's that? I have things to say?
No, I don't believe it. And there is more than one thing on your mind?

Blasphemy she says.
So - we start with the last weekend.
Finn & I took his first road trip down to see his Grandpa and Aunts. And to spend Courtney's birthday with her. Little dude was a champ on the drive down. Is a three hour trip - sorta like that three hour tour that stranded Gilligan -- moving on...
Fed him and hit the road. He slept the WHOLE time. Didn't blink until we crossed the bridge into the LV. And he started wailing as I crossed from the LV into Lansing. Now, at this point, I am 7-10 minutes from my Dad's house. I am not gonna pull over and feed him when I am that close. Rather than do that, I decided I should rationalize with him. Makes perfect sense. What 7 week old doesn't understand what his mom is saying to him??
Right.
But, like I said, couldn't complain. Got the car into park and made a mad dash into the house to feed the screaming munchkin.
My dad had a flash of brilliance and decided to have a little open house on Saturday. Saved me from having to drive all over town to show off the little guy. Got to see all my Mom's friends and quite a few of my dads. I think there was easily a 2 to 3 hour period where I didn't touch Finn at all. He was a champ. Ended up sleeping through most of it, but hey -- thats his way of dealing.
After that insanity -- good insanity, but insanity anyway -- I promised him we would take it easy on Sunday.
Ooops.
That will teach me about promising things to him.
Sunday should have been an easy day of hanging out before hitting the road and coming home and chilling out with Joe.
But instead it was pre-historic-kiddie-meteor-shower hell.
Let me 'splain.

My dad says to me on Saturday - "Hey, we were going to get some brunch with Karen (his girlfriend) and her daughter-in-law and grandkids. You should join us". Being a nice daughter, I agreed that it would be a nice thing to do and I should play nice with the new version of extend a family. Whatevs... unbeknownst to me, the extend-a-family had chosen the restaurant. Understand that I am a pretty anti-chain kind of diner. I will go when needed but not really a fan and tend to avoid at all costs if I can. So when they say to me, we are going to "T-REX" I don't think too much of it. Like that is a nickname or something.

WRONG.

Its kiddie restaurant hell. Its full of animatronic, growling life-size dinosaurs. Check it out yourself here. You get seated by a tour guide. Rooms are divided into themes -- the ancient sea, the ice age... etc. Kids are encouraged to walk around. The room we were in had a giant triceratops and every 30 minutes or so, the "meteor shower" that killed all the dinosaurs happens. Think seizure inducing rave-like light show and you get the idea. We also had a giant fish tank that had a Dorie and Nemo fish in it. Which with kids encouraged to walk around, resulted in several 4 year olds running up to it, screaming "DORIE! NEMO!" and hitting the crap out of the glass. And the food wasn't that good. My theory was that the bar does really well. If I was an adult in there, I would try and drink myself into oblivion as well. And I know you are thinking, "Meghan, you are an adult" Yes, however I had to drive 3 hours and I am nursing. Its the double threat that kept me from several Bloody Mary's.
Let's just say that I won't be doing that again any time soon.
Ever.

Ever, ever.

We also had Finn's first ever St. Patricks day this week. That was pretty good stuff. I mean, I don't think I will be up for the mom-of-the-year awards after bringing a kid into a bar. But if there is one day that you can get away with it, its Patty's day dammit. And we had not one, but two outfits for him. And we ended up needing both of them as we had a blow-out that required a costume change. And I mean, how cute is this:

Everyone needs their first taste of Guiness early in life. Other photos of the day can be found at the Flickr link on the left.

Oh, backtracking -- Happy Birthday to Courtney. I did get a chance to go out for dinner with her and a few of her friends. Which was a good time. Sushi is always a good thing. And I got to leave Finn with my dad for the evening. So a few hours of girl time was well enjoyed.

That should about catch us up with the current life and times of Meghan.
Summing up:
St Patricks Day -still a good time with a kid in tow
Kiddie Themed Dinosaur Resturants - painful. Like, bamboo slivers under the fingernails painful.
Finn - still the cutest little leprechaun on the planet.

Now Watching: The Colbert Report

Zippers and buttons and waistbands, oh my

It was time.
I could only keep wearing elastic panel pants for so long.
I have lost a good chunk (pun intended) of the pregnancy weight. Its crazy though -- I am only 6 lbs off of my pre-pregnancy weight, not that it was a good starting point, but I am carrying it in ways I didn't think possible. Namely in the form of a large tire of goodness around my waist. So I have been wearing the pregnancy clothes since Finn was born. Under the excuse of my c-section. Specifically - that the waistband of most clothes hit right at the incision point.
But I couldn't keep it up.
It was time to re-introduce myself to buttons and zippers.
So, I sucked up my pride and went to buy some jeans I could fit into. Which means due to the aforementioned tire, I had to buy a pair that were 2 sizes bigger than I normally wear.
Which given the fact that I have the all clear from the doctor, means I need to get my ass exercising at some point should I ever want to see that old size again.
It was either that or shovel myself into the jeans that I have right now and then deal with the muffin-top of all muffin-tops.
Hotness.

Now Watching: West Wing re-runs

Photo Realism

I have espoused the great work of Paige Peterson on more than one occasion here. She did my maternity pictures. I mean, come on, when you make a 8-month pregnant woman feel good about pictures, you are doing something right.
So we had her back to do Finn's newborn pictures -- that was the plan the whole time. And today I got a sneak preview of the pics -- you can check them out here on Paige's blog.
Suffice it to say I was totally blown away and can't wait to see the rest of them.
She is amazing. And for the record, its not just because the subject was super cute -- he is -- but the accessory parents are pretty good lookin' too!!

Now Watching: Hell's Kitchen

Adult Swim

Or adult time.
Or Mom & Dad's night out.
Also known as the "how I had more than one glass of wine in a 2 hour period"
As a belated Valentine's Day outing, Joe got us tickets to go see Andrew Bird here in town. So we decided to make a night of it and went out to dinner as well. And Grandma and Grandpa agreed to babysit.
I was a little apprehensive about going out for the night as I am currently the sole source of food for Finn. But we started prepping early in the week and managed to get a little stockpile of mom-juice to get him through the evening.
Here is what I learned in a few short hours last night:

• Cafe Di Scala is a great as ever. Dinner was fantastic.
• The ability to whistle is one that is totally underrated. Andrew Bird has elevated whistling to an art form.
• After not drinking for oh, roughly 9 months -- 3 glasses of wine had me feeling pretty darn good.
• Thank goodness for the concept of "pump & dump". If you are not sure what that is, well, just think about it a little bit.
• The more things change at gt's, the more they stay the same. We stoped in for one drink after the show and saw some people I hadn't seen in ages. And they are all the same people that I had expected to run into there.
• Joe and I are capable of having a conversation -- and extended one at that -- that doesn't center around Finn.
• I can still walk in heels.

And now, it is back to baby central at my house. But that is ok. I will admit, while I had a great time last night, I did miss him a little bit.
There should be more to expound on, however, I can't come up with more.

Now Watching: The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Big Sunday here at the casa....