Having a dog . . .

is nothing like have a baby.  Nothing.  I'm just saying.

A belated happy birthday

On October 20th, this guy

turned 7.  I am so thankful to be his mother.  Wild Man is kind, thoughtful, and loving.  His generosity of spirit pushes me to be a better mother and a better person.

It's been a crappy week . . .

I'm not prepared to say more than that, but I felt the need to acknowledge publicly that it has been a really crappy seven days.  I'm not optimistic that the next seven will get much better.

Saying no

I've gotten really good at saying no.  I often say no--to my children, to my students, to my colleagues.  You see, I have to say no.  My life is structured in such a way that if I don't say no things don't get done.  I just said no to a colleague, a colleague whom I say no to quite frequently.  This colleague needs me to host a dinner for a visiting speaker as the colleague has a conflict.  S/he can't be two places at once, so s/he asked me if I'd relieve hir of one responsibility.  I said no.  It's an evening event, and given that I teach on Tuesday evening and that I'm guest lecturing for this colleague on Wednesday evening I have no desire to attend another evening event this week.  I just don't.  And I said as much.  My colleague was upset, and I do understand that.  But I can't do it.  More importantly, I don't want to do it.  I do the amount of service required of me, and I do it well.  I'm not up for taking on anything else.  I don't much care if I get the reputation as the person who says no.  I don't much care if people think I use my kids as a reason to not attend evening events.  I've learned the hard way that being nice won't get me very far at CU Land.  And I'm not going to feel bad or feel guilty for saying no.

Sleep

I'm also learning that my new normal means that I operate with about 6 hours of sleep a night.  This is not a good thing, but it is just how things are working out right now.

Finding my groove

I am slowly finding my groove.  I'm slowly figuring out what it means to be a working mother of three.  I'm slowly figuring out what things I can let go of and which things have to be done.  It's been a rough few weeks, but now that we have a schedule, now that I know what to expect from most days, I feel like we're getting through the struggle.  I think we're all figuring out what normal is for us now.  That's kind of a good feeling.

The world is made for big breasted women . . .

I am a small breasted woman.  In fact, I only have cleavage when I'm pregnant or first breast feeding.  I've been nursing George for well over a year now, so my breasts are back to their normal size.  I'm at the point where I no longer need breast pads, nor does my breast size fluctuate throughout the day.  George generally only nurses in the evening and perhaps once during the night, so I'm not producing a lot of milk.  Given that, I'm ready to stop wearing nursing bras, even if I'm not ready to wean him yet.  I last bought bras when I was pregnant, so I don't have any bras that fit.  Friday I went shopping.  My demands are pretty simple.  I wanted to buy three or four bras, in my size, that will give me some lift and a bit of coverage.  In all honesty, I want bras that prevent my students and my colleagues from seeing my nipples.  In my mind, that seems like a fairly simple desire.

As I tried bras on, it became clear that I am now almost a full cup size smaller than I was before I started nursing George.  (As an aside that means I've lost almost two cup sizes since Wild Man was born).  I now wear a Double A, for those of you who are interested.  I quickly discovered that I could buy any bra I wanted in any size from 34B to 42DD.  But the Double A is elusive.  The sales person at one lingerie store told me it's easier to go to a specialty store to buy bras in Es, Fs, or Gs (for which I am well aware women have to pay exorbitant prices) than it is to buy Double As.  I was advised to order them online.  But I want to try them on first, I explained.  She suggested I go to the girls' department.  Needless I left the store.

*And before anyone suggests it, I did try on my "sister size," which is apparently a size smaller in width, but a cup larger.  That size didn't fit very well.

An Event

This weekend we had our children baptized.  The ceremony was for all three of them, which made it both chaotic and incredibly special.  I'm still trying to process everything associated with the baptism, including our decision to do it as well as my reaction to it.  I think I'll be writing about this again.  For now I want to say that I am generally fairly ambivalent about religious ceremonies.  For reasons I don't completely understand I was deeply touched by this ceremony, both by the number of friends and family who attended the ceremony and by the reaction of our church community.  I didn't expect to feel anything more than moderately happy that we'd formally introduced our family to the church we've joined.  It was more than that, though.  I can't put it into words just yet, but it was important and good and uplifting.  I went to bed on Sunday feeling as though we'd done something really significant for our children.  What that is remains to be seen, but I'm really happy that we made the decision to have them baptized.