Busy week in snippets

I have to admit that working full-time and doing a majority of the childcare ourselves is tough going sometimes. Rich has reduced his hours slightly, but he's also under a lot of pressure at work and doing graduate studies, so life is extremely busy. This past two weeks we've been interviewing for a new Dean at school and this entails even more meetings - all of them fairly early on in the day. This just put us over the edge in terms of things we had to get done, and so it was a very busy and stressful couple of weeks. On Wednesday, driving home late from work, knowing that Raf was being taken care of by another nanny, I found myself crying because it felt - and feels - so overwhelming sometimes. And when I walked in the door Raf tottered over in my direction and then I realized he was coming over to see the cat who had walked in with me..!! This did not help!

The little Poppet is growing up too fast. Much too fast! And he's much too busy to come and kiss his mama when he has laps to run, cats and dogs to torment, blocs to throw around the room, and so forth. One of the best things about co-sleeping is that I get to hug him all night :)

But even with all the busyness it was a week filled with lovely parts, too.

Week highlights....

On Monday I returned home -late - to find Raf asleep in his highchair. Mid-meal he slowly nodded off (which Jess caught on camera and texted to me). Rich, Jess and I were standing around waiting for him to wake up when, suddenly, he roused and started eating as though nothing had happened. it was very sweet.



On Tuesday we enjoyed magnificent weather. After work I took Raf out for a run in his stroller... just me and him. What a treat to wear shorts and t-shirt on a late October, late afternoon run.

On Wednesday I enjoyed an extra snuggle with Raf after a long, long day at work.

On Thursday, another beautiful, beautiful late afternoon in Maine, and whilst it gets dark so early we managed to fit in a 30 minute family bike ride wearing shorts and t-shirt.

On Friday... well, it was the end of the week and that in and of itself was a very good thing. I did pop to Whole Foods on the way home and I picked up a LOT of Daiya vegan cheese which Raf just loves. I mean... all he says when he's in his high chair is 'chee chee'.

Today we went for a walk this afternoon and Raf enjoyed a really nice 15 minutes running up and down a little grassy slope. He would walk up - falling down many times - and then run down the hill. He was giggling the entire time.





Tomorrow we're hoping to run a local 10k with Raf in the Chariot, and then we're off to some friends for some Halloween fun!

I am trying to ignore the 50 midterms I have to mark, and also the conference paper I need to write by next week.. gah.