Getting smart about business travel

Time for another trip to Seattle. I really can't complain because aside from the extra two days I spent in Wyoming about six weeks ago, I haven't had any business trips away from Littles since mid-August -- not a bad run.

I got smart on this trip. I have been flying out for my Seattle trips late Sunday night or first thing Monday morning, and flying home Friday afternoon or on the Friday night red-eye, so that I can get a full five days in the office (or very close to it). But I started noticing that my boss and his other remote employees (there are three of us now) usually flew in midday Monday and left Thursday afternoon or early Friday morning.

So this trip, rather than flying out on Sunday night or on the 7:30 AM flight on Monday, I picked a 10:10 AM flight today. Three hours might not sound like that much longer to spend at home, but to catch a 7:30 AM flight, I have to leave home before Littles wakes up, while a 10:10 AM flight gives me enough time to help Hubby get her up and get her ready. I was even able to drop her off at Kristi's today. This did cause me to miss baggage check-in by four minutes, so my checked bag had to go on a later flight -- a minor inconvenience in return for a few more minutes with my little girl! And thanks to "gaining" time traveling east to west, I still managed to get some good time in the office in the afternoon.

I'm flying home on the red-eye on Thursday night. I've been trying to avoid red-eyes because I am so dead the next day. These pictures were taken the day I arrived home after my last red-eye flight back in August :)

But I figure with a Thursday night red-eye, I can be in the office all day Thursday, still get home in time to help Hubby out on Friday morning, drop Littles off at Kristi's as usual, and then take a nap. From a work perspective, it's no different from if I flew home early Friday morning (either way, I would be inaccessible on Friday morning), but again, it makes a huge difference for Littles and Hubby.

I also spent last night cooking freezable food, emptying the recycle bins and the trash can, and washing and folding laundry. I remember when Hubby used to travel on business. Little things like cooking or finding a clean outfit become ten times harder when you have a baby pulling at your leg. I'm happy to know that Hubby has at least one night's dinner ready to go, that all the clothes are clean and put away, that he won't have to do an emergency emptying of the recycle bins or the trash can just to be able to throw something away, etc.

We'll see how it goes!

Searching for child care, round 3

This is my sixth post in a series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, we found a nanny share for Littles when I initially went back to work. We were really happy with the arrangement.

So when we decided to move from California to Dallas, Texas, shortly before Littles' first birthday, one of our biggest concerns was finding a similarly wonderful child care situation for her. This was a little complicated because we had to do most of the searching from a distance!

Although we loved our California nanny share, I wasn't necessarily opposed to a different type of child care. So I looked at all sorts of different options.

Daycare centers
As I had done during our very first child care search, I started with a list of daycare centers that offered a discount through my employer. I also got recommendations from friends in the area, and scoured the City-data.com forum for the Dallas area -- lots of great information there. Then I looked up all the daycares on the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services website. This allowed me to see any licensing violations that the daycares had received.

We came out to Dallas for a househunting trip in late April, about six weeks before our move was scheduled. I stayed for an extra day with Littles, and we visited a ton of daycare centers near our new home.

At the end of the day, I had found three centers that I liked:

• Creme de la Creme. You have to check out the online virtual tour of this place. It is like Disney does daycare. There is a water park, a tricycle autobahn, an indoor fish pond... you name it! Unfortunately, you also pay for it -- the cost was significantly more than any other daycare in the area.
• Bright Horizons. A large national chain with a consistent reputation for excellence. I couldn't put my finger on anything specific, but this place just felt "right."
• Discover and Share. A local daycare that came highly recommended from the City-data.com forum. This place felt very comfortable. I talked for quite a while with one of the teachers, and she told me -- unprompted -- that it was the best place she'd ever worked at. From what I saw of it, I wasn't surprised.

In-home daycares
I also wanted to look at in-home daycares, but by searching the Texas DFPS website, I quickly discovered that there were not many in the vicinity of our new home. Reluctantly, I took this option off the table.

Other options
As soon as we knew we were moving, I started monitoring craigslist constantly for new child care postings. Weeks went by with nothing even remotely appealing coming up.

Then, about a month before our move, I saw a listing come up that sounded perfect! It was a mom with three small kids, looking to watch another child out of her home. I talked with her on the phone for about 30 minutes one night, and we seemed to be on the same page with regards to... well, just about everything parenting-related.

We had another trip to Dallas planned over Memorial Day weekend, about two weeks before our move, so we planned to meet the mom. I loved her! Unfortunately, Hubby did not. He was concerned that her two older kids (ages 5 and 3) seemed to be pretty addicted to TV, which is something that we are not big on at all. And he didn't like that the mom left her youngest child (7 months old) alone in a nearby room for a few minutes while we were talking. He put his foot down and absolutely refused to go with her.

The final decision
With no other options available, I agreed to go with a daycare center. Together, Hubby and I visited the three that I had identified on my April trip, and decided that Bright Horizons was our top choice. We put our deposit down to hold Littles' place.

I had a lot of reservations about Bright Horizons, though. Most of these centered around the fact that they wanted to put Littles in the toddler room. Developmentally, this made sense, as she was walking at that point and really no longer belonged in the infant room. But I was worried about the transition:

• At the time, Littles was still taking a few bottles of expressed breastmilk daily. We were working to transition her to whole milk out of the sippy cup, but it was not going well. Bright Horizons wanted her completely off the bottle.
• In her nanny share, Littles was used to sleeping in a crib or pack-n-play (portable crib) in a quiet room by herself. At Bright Horizons, she would be napping on a mat in a room with many other kids.
• Littles was still taking two naps most days, but the toddler room at Bright Horizons had only one nap a day.
• Naptime was scheduled for around 11:30 AM. Since Littles was moving across two time zones, I was worried that she might not be tired at naptime, then be exhausted later.
• I wasn't thrilled with Bright Horizon's menu. Granted, it was far better than some of the other daycare centers I looked at -- one served biscuits and gravy for breakfast, another served juice and brownies as a snack. (To a roomful of 1-year-olds? Are you insane?) Still, it just didn't live up to my standards.

In short, I was really concerned about Littles going through all this change, on top of moving halfway across the country, leaving the nanny who had taken care of her for over half her life, etc.

Hubby thought Bright Horizons was the right choice, and was really upset with me for being so wishy-washy. It wasn't a fun time, for either of us.

I kept looking on craigslist, hopeful that another option would come up. And finally, one did! I found a listing from another stay-at-home mom, named Kristi. She had great credentials -- she helped in her mom's in-home daycare as a child, went to college for early childhood education, worked in daycare centers, raised her two sons (ages 8 and 10), etc. She was watching her own two boys, who were home for the summer, along with another little boy who was a month younger than Littles. Her home was a little bit of a drive from ours, but it was manageable.

I met with her a few days after we moved to Dallas. (My mother-in-law came up from Austin to watch Littles as we settled in during those early weeks, which gave me some extra time to interview caregivers.) I felt far more comfortable with her than with Bright Horizons. And Hubby agreed to give her a shot.

We checked references, ran a background check -- and then, on Littles' first birthday, she started with Kristi.

Well, crap.

Despite this blog's title, I'm actually feeling pretty balanced these days. When I'm at home, my focus is my family. When I'm in Seattle, my focus is my work. For the most part, I feel like I have plenty of time for both.

This past week and a half has been a challenge, because I've been with my family in Seattle. My husband had a business trip here, so I figured I'd do my monthly trip at the same time, and bring Littles.

For the most part, it worked out well. We took advantage of our company's backup care program yet again, and they were able to place Littles at a local daycare center. I far preferred this to the in-hotel nanny situation that we had when I brought her here back in May. It was also wonderful being able to wake up next to my husband every day. Had we not combined our trips, we would have spent two full weeks apart from each other, which would have sucked.

But Wednesday was a rough day. I had a team meeting starting at 9 AM, so I had to wake Littles up (which I hate doing) and rush through our morning routine to get out the door and off to daycare. Most days, when I dropped her off there, I was able to sit with her for a little while until she warmed up and joined in the activities. But that day, since I was already late, I had to get up to leave before she was fully settled. She cried as I left. Always a crappy start to the day.

I headed off to my office, thinking I'd get there just in time for my meeting. Instead, I got caught in terrible, terrible traffic. Someone thought it was a bright idea to shut down one lane on a major thoroughfare smack in the middle of rush hour. I prayed that the my co-workers would be stuck in the same traffic jam. No such luck. I walked in 15 minutes late to find everyone waiting on me.

The meeting was supposed to go until 4 PM. Instead, it was still going strong at 5 PM, the time that I normally started packing up to go pick up Littles. I knew my husband had a dinner with his co-workers, so he couldn't go get her. I would have to do it. "Great," I was thinking, "I get to see my boss about once a month, and what is he going to see from me? Showing up late and leaving early."

Thankfully, one of my other co-workers is in a carpool, so he had to leave at 5:30 PM, and when he did, I mentioned that I would need to leave soon as well. I still had to present my product's roadmap, so I rushed through it, threw my laptop in my bag, and ran off to pick up Littles. Crappy employee.

I arrived at 6 PM, half an hour later than usual. Littles was the last kid left. Crappy mother.

I love having her with me on these trips, but I'll admit, it's a lot easier when I come alone and can just focus on work.

Fun times, and not so fun times

Fun times: We recently returned from an awesome vacation to Wyoming! We spent 8 days in Jackson, Grand Teton National Park, and Yellowstone National Park.

Vacations like this remind me of why I work. This particular trip was actually a business trip -- we flew out about a week before my business meeting started in order to enjoy the local sights. So that saved us some money! Also, seeing the look of wonder on Littles' face as she saw a buffalo for the first time or witnessed the power of a waterfall reminded me of a quote: "Life is not measured by the breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away." I know I'm not there for every breath Littles takes, but I'm there for the moments that take her breath away, and that's what really counts.

Not so fun times: I forgot my pump! Not such a big deal, except that I had to stay for two days longer than Hubby and Littles in order to attend my meeting! Oops. I ended up missing four nursing sessions total, and I hand-expressed milk to keep my supply up and avoid engorgement. I'm not going to explain exactly what hand-expressing entails; look it up if you're interested :). Anyway, it worked out fine, but I was really glad to get home.

Why I love wireless Internet

I'm usually pretty good about putting down my work at 5 PM so I can go pick Littles up from her sitter's. I get home and focus on Littles until she goes to bed, then catch up on work once she's asleep if I need to.

On Friday, I came back home from picking up Littles and found three instant messages frantically blinking at me. So after Littles finished nursing, Hubby took her out to play on the patio so I could finish things up.

I followed them out on the patio, laptop in tow.

Wireless network router: $45
Being able to get your work done without missing your husband gleefully soaking your giggling daughter: Priceless

Nanny share pros and cons

This is my fifth post in a series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, when I first returned to work, we placed Littles in a nanny share. Maria, our nanny, watched another girl named Dani, who is about 18 months older than Littles. Maria also brought her daughter, Gali, who is almost exactly 4 years older than Littles.

I wrote quite a bit about our nanny share in a post back in February. Overall, the experience was fantastic. Hubby and I are already thinking about trying to find something similar when we have another child.

Still, I went in thinking that it would be perfect. It was not. Now I understand that no child care situation is perfect. (Including having one parent stay at home!)

In retrospect, the root cause of the handful of complaints that I did have was that I made a lot of assumptions.

Caregiver style
Probably the biggest assumption I made was that Maria would fully defer to my desires on all aspects of Littles' care. She did not. Our biggest disagreement, as I described in my February post, was over how to get Littles to sleep for naps. Maria let her "cry it out" -- something that I was very much opposed to. I told Maria that I didn't want her to do it, and she did it anyway. In that case, I must admit that it worked quite well and does not seem to have had any negative long-term impact on Littles. But I always worried that Maria and I would disagree on something else major, and that I would have to defer to her again.

Lesson learned: Every child care provider has his or her own "style," as does every parent. Some providers are more willing than others to adjust their "style" to fit a parent's. Now I know to ask providers about their style, and to sniff out how willing a provider is to change their style to suit mine.

Breastfeeding
I had assumed that I would be able to mostly breastfeed during the days when the nanny share was at our house and I worked from home. This would have greatly eased my pumping load.

But I never discussed this with Maria before we started. Within a week, it became very apparent that this was not going to work out. Part of it was that Littles seemed to do better when she took bottles exclusively during the day -- I think she got confused when I saw her to nurse and then "left." But I also think that Maria could have been more supportive. For example, she sometimes didn't want to "bother" me at work, so she simply gave Littles a bottle without telling me. Unfortunately, that seriously messed with my schedule, because I was waiting on Maria to bring Littles to nurse, and didn't realize that I needed to pump instead.

If we do a nanny situation with future babies and I'm still working from home, I plan to discuss my desire to nurse as much as possible ahead of time, rather than springing it on the nanny on the first day.

Conserving my "liquid gold"
I also assumed that Maria would treat my expressed breastmilk like I did. This one is hard to explain if you've never pumped. Pumping moms often call expressed breastmilk "liquid gold," because it is! It takes so much effort to get it out that you don't want to waste a single drop. Maria certainly didn't waste breastmilk on purpose, but I think she could have conserved it a little better than she did. For example, she often gave a bottle late in the day (around 4 PM or even later, when I picked Littles up between 5 and 5:30 PM), rather than waiting for me to get there to nurse.

A few other minor quibbles that I had:

• We had some struggles with Dani, who was very jealous of Littles. For example, if one of her parents said hello to Littles, she would scream, "No Littles!" She also scratched Littles on multiple occasions. This did not really bother me, as I knew Dani was being disciplined appropriately for her behavior and the scratches were not serious, but it really bugged Hubby.
  
• The two older girls watched TV. Not a significant amount, just a half hour of cartoons before their nap and occasionally a little at the end of the day too, and Maria usually gave Littles a bottle or played with her while the older girls watched TV. But we try not to have the TV on around Littles at all, so even half an hour was more than I would have liked.
  
• Maria generally worked 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. She was usually happy to come early or stay late on the occasional days when we needed her to, but I always felt bad making her do that. After all, she has a family and a life of her own. On those days, I wished we were at a daycare center, where I could drop off at 7 AM and know that Littles' teacher wasn't there just because of us.
  
• There was not much structure to the girls' days with Maria. They walked to the park when the weather was nice, and the rest of the day was spent in unstructured play. This was fine -- even preferable -- for Littles as an infant, but it might have become less desirable had we stayed with Maria as Littles got older.
  
• One oft-cited con to a one-caregiver situation like our nanny share is that you have no backup if the caregiver is sick or unavailable for any reason. Luckily, as I've mentioned before, we have excellent backup child care through our jobs, so this was not an issue for us.

That said, there were many pros to our nanny share, and they far outweighed the cons!

Individualized attention
I cannot stress the importance of this one enough. Littles got so much love and attention! Part of this goes back to Maria's caregiver "style" -- this was definitely a positive aspect of it. She always reached out to hold Littles the moment I walked through the door, gave her lots of hugs and kisses, and generally made sure that she interacted with her as much as possible. Littles really bonded with her. Gali was like a miniature version of her mom, always talking to and playing with Littles. Dani, like most 2-year-olds, was mostly wrapped up in her own little world :), but Littles loved watching her dance, run, and play. I think that interaction and bonding was really important to Littles as an infant.

One caregiver to bond with
I also think it's really important for infants to have the chance to bond strongly with one caregiver. In a daycare environment, an infant room might have three, four, five or more teachers in and out over the course of a day. I liked that Maria was Littles' only caregiver, that she didn't need to give me daily written reports because she could just tell me everything about Littles' day, that Littles had lots of consistency and familiarity in care. Some moms don't like this because they think their baby will start to prefer the caregiver, but this never happened. Littles loved Maria, but she never forgot that Hubby and I are her dad and mom!

I remember coming to pick Littles up one day, a few weeks before we moved. Maria had given her a Doodle Pro to play with, and as Maria and I caught up on her day, Littles attempted to figure out the Doodle Pro -- she kept trying to draw with the wrong end of the magnetic wand. Finally, she figured it out and scribbled a clear black line on the pad. She looked at me with a big smile, clearly proud of herself, and then gave Maria the same smile and the same look. It was in that moment that I could see just how well she had bonded with Maria. It made me happy that she spent her days with someone she loved so much, and who loved her so much.

Social interaction
Littles absolutely loved Dani and Gali. She got a huge smile on her face every morning when they came running over to say hello. I think she enjoyed the nanny share much more than she would have enjoyed being alone with a nanny. The nanny share offered a great balance between social interaction and individualized attention.

Interaction with older kids
Dani and Gali interacted with Littles in a much different way from either adults or other babies. For example, from the day we brought Littles home from the hospital, we used a bouncy chair that had a little dog toy attached to it. If you pulled on the dog toy, it played a song. Littles hadn't figured out the dog toy when she started in hte nanny share, but within a week, Gali had taught her how to pull on the dog toy to make it play the song. Another baby would not have the awareness to show her that; an adult (like me!) would have no interest in pulling the silly toy over and over to show Littles how it worked. It took an older child to do that.

Comfortable surroundings
Littles got to spend two days a week in the familiar environment of her own home. The rest of the week, she was in a similar home-like setting, with the benefit of access to Dani's extensive toy collection :) Far different from the busy environment of daycare. She does great in these environments now, but I think it was good for her to get used to them gradually, rather than all at once as a young infant.

Convenience
Not having to pack up all of Littles' stuff on the two days when the nanny share was at our house was wonderful! Also, the flip side of "inconveniencing" Maria by asking her to come early some days was that I didn't have to inconvenience Littles on those days by waking her up to go to daycare. Oftentimes, on the days when Maria arrived at 7:30 AM, Littles was just waking up as she arrived.

Cost
We paid about the same for Maria as we would have paid at a daycare center -- and much less than we would have paid for a dedicated nanny. Yet we got a much lower caregiver to child ratio and greater convenience.

Cleaning
We paid Maria $35 extra each week, and she cleaned up as the girls napped. This was a nice little side benefit, and far cheaper than a cleaning service. She also did things that our old cleaning service didn't do, such as putting away clean dishes and folding Littles' clothes.

Conclusions
We really lucked out with our nanny share. As inexperienced parents, we didn't even know what questions to ask in our interview with Maria. But we went with our gut, and ended up finding a wonderful situation for Littles. It wasn't perfect, to be sure, but Littles was safe and very loved, and that's all a parent can ask for.

It never gets any easier

Just arrived in Seattle for my August trip. This is my third trip alone, and leaving Littles and Hubby never gets any easier :( I'm always near tears as I walk out the door.

I'm already counting the hours until I get home.

Mia's first day at daycare!

Kristi (Littles' normal sitter) took a day off today, so we needed backup care. For the first time, Work Options Group was able to locate a daycare center that would take Littles as a drop-in, rather than assigning a nanny to come take care of her at home. I think it helps that she's now a "toddler" rather than an "infant" -- the ratios in the toddler rooms are a little higher, so they're more likely to have open spots.

So I pulled out the Sharpie to label all her stuff last night, then packed her up this morning and off we went!

She got off to a bit of a rocky start. Moments after we arrived, they combined the two toddler rooms (10 kids and 2 teachers each) for a special "exercise" program with music. She seemed to be settling in fine, so I stepped away to hand over her diaper bag and give some instructions to the lead teacher in her room. When I came back, Littles was whimpering, and then she started crying when she saw me. I think that all the kids, activity, music, etc. just freaked her out a little.

I knew that my presence probably wasn't helping, so I left, and called about an hour later. The teacher told me that she had indeed stopped crying after I left and was off playing happily.

She ended up doing really well! She only napped for 20 minutes (normal for her is 2 hours), but that was actually more that I expected, given that she had to sleep on a mat in a room with a bunch of other kids rather than in a crib in a room by herself. She ate all her food and was a good girl. The teachers said that she did even better than two kids who started a few days ago. I was so proud of her!

Nanny share logistics

This is my fourth post in a series on finding child care.

As I explained in my last post on this subject, when I first returned to work, we placed Littles in a nanny share. Maria, our nanny, watched another girl named Dani, who is about 18 months older than Littles. Maria also brought her daughter, Gali, who is almost exactly 4 years older than Littles.

Nanny share logistics can be a little tricky, since you're dealing with not only a nanny but also another family. Here's what we figured out for ours.

Which house?
Some nanny shares are always at one family's house. In our case, we decided to split days between Dani's house and our house. Usually, everyone came to our house on Mondays and Wednesdays, and we took Littles over to Dani's house the rest of the week.

Equipment
Both families provided pack-n-plays (portable cribs/play yards). Littles slept in Dani's pack-n-play at her house, which was set up in the bedroom of Dani's school-age brother. Dani slept in Littles' pack-n-play at our house, which we set up in either our master bedroom or our office, depending on whether or not I was working from home that day. At our house, Gali slept on a mat on the floor of the living room; I assume she did something similar at Dani's house.

We purchased a Fisher Price Healthy Care booster seat right before we started the nanny share, and that is what Dani ate on at our house. We then purchased a high chair for Littles when she started solids. Dani's family had a Healthy Care booster seat and a high chair as well, so Littles used their high chair at their house.

Dani's family had previously purchased a double stroller, so Maria kept it in her car and brought it back and forth between our house and Dani's. This allowed her to easily take all three girls out for a walk.

We had to do some childproofing of our home when we first started in the nanny share -- mostly putting gates on the steps to ensure that Dani didn't fall. We didn't mind at all, since we knew we would need the gates for Littles in a few months anyway! (And we did...) This might be bad, but we never really looked over Dani's house from a childproofing perspective, even after Littles got more mobile. We figured Dani's family had already childproofed well enough to keep her alive, and Maria would raise any concerns she had about Littles' safety.

Nanny pay
As is typical, Maria charged a little more to watch two children instead of one. Typically, each family paid $8/hour, so Maria made $16/hour total. If one family needed Maria but the other didn't, the family who needed her paid $14/hour. For example, Maria typically worked 8:30-5:30, but some days, we needed her to come early or stay late. On those days, we paid her $14/hour for the extra hours.

Both families also paid Maria about $35 extra per week to clean up around the house. She vacuumed, cleaned the bathrooms, washed windows, cleaned the kitchen, put away dishes/loaded the dishwasher, folded laundry, dusted, etc. She usually waited till Littles took a nap to vacuum, and she did the rest of the cleaning while all three girls were down for a nap (right after lunch). This was definitely a nice perk of having in-home care!

Sick/vacation days
We did not specifically negotiate a certain number of sick days or vacation days. Dani's family had been using Maria for over a year when we joined the share, and they assured us that she was very reliable and almost always there. Indeed, in 8 months with her, she never called in sick and only asked for three days off, each time with over a month's notice. We paid her when she took time off -- I figure everyone needs a break from their job every once in a while! Also, if either family took vacation, they still paid Maria as if they were there. This allowed Maria to count on a consistent income, and it also allowed each family to count on a consistent price for Maria -- it would have been awful if we had had to pay more than anticipated one week just because Dani was out sick or on vacation!

Conclusions
Really, the arrangement was pretty informal. We did not sign a contract or talk about liability (e.g. if Dani got hurt at our home) or decide on sick-child policies or write up emergency policies (i.e. if Littles or Dani needed to be rushed to the doctor) or anything like that. Naive? Maybe. But it worked out fine.

In my next post, I'll talk about the pros and cons of our nanny share.

I'm still alive!

I know it's been a while, but yes, I'm still alive!

I made another trip up to Seattle last week. It was pure craziness, as a number of my friends and co-workers were there as well, so we had some late nights out on the town :) And I thought I didn't get much sleep at home with a 1-year-old who wakes up at 7 AM every day. Yeesh.

This was my longest trip yet, at six full days. I left early Sunday morning (there was a meeting on Sunday afternoon) and got home on the red-eye early Saturday morning. I had fun and got some good work done, but by the end of the week, I was so ready to come home. I missed Littles and Hubby terribly, and the week just dragged on and on.

As a result, I continued what is probably a bad habit: I buy Littles a gift on every trip I take. It helps ease the guilt I feel from leaving her. Sort of. At least this trip, I had the good sense to indulge at a thrift shop, where I picked up a baby University of Washington football jersey for all of $2.17. Last trip, I happened to walk past a super-expensive toy store just a few hours before my flight. Not. Good.

Nothing has changed with Littles' nursing situation since my last trip -- she still nurses morning and night -- so I had to pull out the pump again. I skipped my pumping session on Sunday night, and ended up pumping really late (ummm, 3 AM) on Monday night, so my supply seemed to take a bit of a hit, and Littles seems a little less interested in nursing now that I'm back home. I'm fine with that; I'm not rushing her into weaning fully, but whenever she's ready, I am too.

I'll have only two weeks at home before I have to head up there for another week :( It's OK, because I did have a long stretch at home (4 full weeks) between my last two trips, but ugh, I'm not really looking forward to it.

The one thing I'm happy about is that Hubby and Littles may come with me on the two trips after this next one! I have a meeting in Jackson, Wyoming, in mid-September, so we're all flying out a week early for vacation. Then, Hubby has to go to Seattle in late September, so if we're able to find backup care for Littles, I'll probably try to fly out that same week and we'll bring Littles with us. Cross your fingers that it all works out!

In conclusion, I'll leave you with another installment in my "Where I pumped today" series. This is the nursing room at Seattle-Tacoma airport. Yes, a nursing room! It's a quiet, private space with two rocking chairs and outlets for moms who need to pump. Far better than nursing in public or pumping in a bathroom. Every airport should have one of these! I pumped here on Friday night just before boarding my red-eye home:


Adjacent to the nursing room is a children's play area. Brilliant! A place for active toddlers to burn off some energy before boarding their flights. Hopefully Littles will get a chance to play here in a few weeks when she comes up with Hubby and me!

Searching for child care, round 2

This is my third post in a series on finding child care.

As I explained in my last post on this subject, we put Littles on a waiting list at a daycare center while I was pregnant, but ended up moving away from that area shortly before the end of my maternity leave. This meant that we had to start the daycare search all over again.

Once again, I started looking at daycare centers that offered a discount through my employer. I visited two, and was not terribly impressed.

But this time around, I was willing to consider options other than a daycare center. Our new home would be an 1800 square foot townhouse, much bigger than our old condo, and it would have a third bedroom that I would use as my office. So having someone come to our home was now an option. In addition, I had a clearer picture of what I would be doing when I returned to work, and I knew I'd be working from home quite a bit. This made the idea of having a caregiver in our home even more appealing.

Still, we could not afford a nanny. But late one night, I got the idea to look on craigslist for a nanny share. Amazingly, I immediately located not one but two nanny share options in our new location! (I am still amazed by my luck that evening. Good nanny shares are tough to find on craigslist.) I emailed both to set up meetings.

The first family had a daughter named Dani, who was almost two years old at the time. They had tried some daycares initially, when Dani was about six months old, but didn't like any of them and eventually decided to bite the bullet and hire a nanny. They found Maria and loved her, but realized that they couldn't afford her. So they started sharing with another family. The mom in the other family had recently been laid off and had decided to stay at home with her son, so Dani's family was looking for another family to share Maria with.

The second family had a son named Evan, who was in the infant room at one of the local daycare centers. Since he was almost a year old, he was getting ready to move up to the toddler room, and his parents did not like what they'd seen of that room. So they talked to Jennifer, one of the teachers in the infant room, about nannying for them (which I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do with your daycare teachers, but that wasn't our problem...), and were looking to find another family to share Jennifer with.

Hubby and I both met with each family and the prospective nanny together. I didn't have any pre-defined questions to ask -- I had asked some basic questions of each family over email, such as the age of the other child, what the nanny was like, and the cost. I mostly wanted to see whether I felt comfortable with the situation or not.

Littles devised her own test, as only a two-month-old can do: She took an enormous poop during both meetings. The differences were telling.

Dani's family heard the poop and immediately offered up their changing table to us. Hubby took Littles back to the changing table. Unprompted, Maria followed him, and pitched in to help with the diaper.

If Evan's family heard the poop (which is likely, because it was pretty loud), they didn't acknowledge it. Littles was sitting in Hubby's lap, and I could see him nervously shifting her around, looking to see if she was leaking. Since it was getting towards the end of the meeting anyway, we said that Littles had a dirty diaper and we better get going. Evan's mom and dad just said, "Oh, OK." No offers to help.

As we changed Littles' diaper, Hubby and I quickly agreed that we felt far more comfortable with Dani's family. We called them the next day to say, "Let's do it."

Searching for child care, round 1

This is my second post in a series on finding child care.

As I mentioned in my first post on this subject, we have now done the child care search three times.

The first time was while I was pregnant and, later, on maternity leave. At the time, we were living in a 1100 square foot condo that had basically three rooms -- the master bedroom, Littles' bedroom, and the main living area, which included my office. Consequently, I did not consider any type of care in our home, because I figured it would be too distracting to have Littles spending her days just a few feet away from where I was trying to work. (In retrospect, I was absolutely right on this.)

I did not really consider in-home daycares, stay-at-home moms, etc. either. I don't really remember why. Part of it might have been that I couldn't imagine trusting someone who was completely alone (i.e. no other adults) with my child all day.

So that left daycare centers as the only remaining option. I started with the list of centers that provided discounts through my employer, and called to schedule some visits.

I didn't really have a list of questions that I asked. I quickly found that I just had to listen to my gut. Some places, I immediately felt at ease and comfortable. Others just never felt right. Sadly, this included the center that was by far the most convenient, just a quarter mile away from our house and offering a 20% discount through our employer. But if it's not right, it's not right, and that place did not feel right at all.

I ended up finding two places that I liked. One was a Kindercare facility, about a 10 minute drive from our house -- Kindercare is a huge national chain with many many facilities. The other was a non-chain daycare called Future Assets.

I liked the Kindercare facility, but I loved Future Assets. Even now, 1.5 years after my first visit, it stands out as probably the best daycare I've ever visited. Unfortunately, we got hung up on the terms for reserving a space for Littles. Kindercare wanted a non-refundable $25 application fee to put her on the waiting list -- totally reasonable. Future Assets wanted a $100 application fee plus first and last months' tuition. That came out to almost $3000, all non-refundable!

So we decided to put Littles on the waiting list at Kindercare (we did this about two months before she was born) and to cross our fingers that Future Assets would still have a spot if we felt it was the right place to be as my return-to-work date drew closer.

That ended up being a fantastic decision. When Littles was about two months old, our landlord sold our condo, meaning that we had to move. Hubby's office was about a 45 minute drive from that condo, so we decided to move closer to his office. Of course, that meant that neither the Kindercare we had looked at nor Future Assets made sense as child care options. Good thing we didn't put down $3000 non-refundable at Future Assets!

So, we started the child care search again...

Traveling with(out) a nursing toddler

Although it's been over a month since I weaned from the pump, I do still nurse Littles twice a day -- once in the morning when she first wakes up, and once in the evening, a little before dinner. I enjoy nursing, Littles is still interested (although I often feel that she enjoys the cuddles and the 1:1 time with Mom more than the milk, not that there's anything wrong with that!), and so I have no plans to drop either of these sessions anytime soon.

Of course, this posed a dilemma during my travels this past week. Since nursing is a supply-and-demand system, I knew I couldn't skip nursing all week and expect to pick up where I left off when I got home.

This meant that if I wanted to continue nursing, I would have to (gasp!) start pumping again.

It actually was not too bad. There were two main reasons why I hated full-time pumping:

1. I hated the awkwardness of either telling co-workers about pumping or finding excuses to take pump breaks during the workday.
   
2. I hated the day-to-day "am I pumping enough?" stress.

Pumping for a nursing toddler elimates both of these problems. I only needed to pump before and after work, so there was no awkwardness during the workday. And I really didn't care how much I pumped; honestly, I'm not even sure we'll end up using the milk I pumped, as Littles should be able to do whole milk exclusively by the time of my next trip at the end of July.

I refused to bring my Medela Pump in Style out of retirement, so I took along my Medela Harmony manual pump instead. I was pleasantly surprised by how much milk I was able to get. I've been feeling fairly "deflated" and I've wondered whether I really have any milk left. To my surprise, I averaged about 4-5 oz per session, which is a pretty decent amount.

Transporting the milk home was a breeze, since I only had the two pump sessions. Back in my full-time pumping days, I would have pumped probably around 100 oz on a trip of this length. Getting all that milk home would be a huge pain! This time, I only pumped about 35 oz, so I didn't have any difficulty fitting it into two cooler bags and carrying it on.

I have no goals around nursing or pumping right now, so I don't know whether or not I'll go through all of this again during my next trip. But if I do decide to do it, it's nice to know it's not too much of a hassle.

The upside of traveling

Reading Littles' "comment" on my last blog entry reminded me of one of the benefits of traveling on business: Littles and Hubby will get plenty of quality daddy-daughter time together! I've talked to them a few times today, and it sounds like they're having a blast. I think the time alone together will be really good for both of them.

And it's sunny and in the low 70's here in Seattle, and I could see Mount Rainier this morning on my drive in to the office. Life is -- well, not great, but not so bad either.

I might just be the worst mom ever.

That's how working mom's guilt sometimes makes me feel.

Littles has had a rough time adjusting to Texas. First, her sleep schedule was all off, thanks to the time zone change. Then, on the Wednesday after we arrived, she came down with a double ear infection, which further threw off her sleep.

After a pretty rough day, she recovered well from that, and she started in her new nanny share last Wednesday. The first day went fine. On Thursday, the second day, I could see a tear running down her cheek when I came to pick her up, and Kristi (the nanny) said, "She's been fussy and clingy all day. I think she's missing you."

Sigh. At least Friday was better again.

But then, literally minutes before her first birthday party started on Saturday, I thought she felt a little warm. Sure enough, she was running a fever, which eventually spiked up to about 103 overnight.

We took her to urgent care midday Sunday, and the doctor said she looked fine and probably just had a virus or other infection. Her fever broke not long after that.

So I figured I'd proceed with my longstanding plans to catch a 7:30 AM flight to Seattle this morning. I was a little nervous, what with the bad day at Kristi's on Thursday and the fever over the weekend, but I figured I didn't really have a good reason not to go.

Until Littles refused to go to bed last night.

We're still not sure what that was about. She screamed whenever we put her in her crib, or tried to rock her, or tried to lay down with her. All of a sudden, around midnight, she calmed down and started running around and laughing and playing like it was the middle of the day. Strangest thing! I was finally able to nurse her to sleep at about 12:30 AM.

So I skipped the early-morning flight to see how Littles did today. She did just fine, settling down easily for her nap, so I felt better about proceeding with my Seattle plans.

I was able to stand by for an evening flight tonight at no charge, so that worked out well. But boy, I did not want to go. I think about her wanting her mommy, wondering where I am, wondering if I'll ever come home again, and I just want to cry :(

It's going to be a long week.

Child care options

We just finished our third search for child care, so I thought I'd write a couple of posts about the process we've gone through.

First, the options. Most people break down child care into three categories:

• Daycare centers. These tend to be large, with kids broken up into multiple classrooms by age. Biggest pro: Always available. If your teacher is ill, the center handles finding a backup. Biggest con: Lots of kids can mean less 1:1 attention... and more germs and illness.
  
• In-home daycares. These are usually smaller. In Texas, for example, in-home daycares can have no more than 12 children at one time, regardless of the number of providers -- that's the size of one classroom at many daycare centers! Most in-home providers also accept kids of all ages, from infant to preschool. Biggest pro: Most in-home daycares have only one provider, so your child is able to really bond with that provider, rather than seeing multiple teachers over the course of his/her day. Biggest con: You'll usually find yourself scrambling for backup care if your provider is sick or goes on vacation.
  
• Nannies. A nanny comes to your home to watch your child. Biggest pro: Tons of 1:1 attention. Biggest con: Cost. A good nanny can easily cost more than your mortgage payment.

When I first started looking for child care, when I was pregnant, I thought these were the only options available. And, personally, I don't like any of these options, at least at Littles' age. I think that 1:1 attention is so important for infants/toddlers, but at all of the daycare centers and in-home daycares that I've looked at, Littles would be one of four or five children assigned to one caregiver.

A nanny certainly provides 1:1 attention, but the cost is prohibitive for us. Plus, Littles really does enjoy interacting with other kids, and I don't think she would get enough of that interaction if she were home alone all day with a nanny.

For me, the "sweet spot" is 2 or 3 children with one caregiver -- enough so that each child gets plenty of attention from the caregiver, but also plenty of interaction with other kids.

So I am lucky to have stumbled upon a couple of additional options, both of which hit my "sweet spot" for the number of children, at a reasonable cost:

• Nannies who bring their own child. This gives your child a built-in playmate. Also, the nanny usually charges a little less, since she's essentially getting free child care.
  
• Nanny shares. One nanny, two families. This is what we did in California, and it worked out to be about the same price as a daycare center.
  
• Stay-at-home moms. Some stay-at-home moms look to watch an extra child or two to make some extra money. This is what we will be doing in Texas. The mom who we'll be leaving Littles with is actually on the high end as far as what she charges, compared to other stay-at-home moms providing child care, but we feel she's worth it. And she's still cheaper than a daycare center.

In my next post, I'll talk more about my process of searching for child care.

The milk made it safely :)

Hubby said the milk made it safely, still frozen solid. In fact, he said it was probably colder than when I took it out of the freezer! 10 lbs of dry ice was definitely enough :)

Shipping breastmilk

I still have about 160 oz of frozen breastmilk in the freezer. With our pending move, I was prepared to dump whatever Littles didn't drink this week. After all, transporting frozen breastmilk is a huge pain, because it must stay frozen -- if it thaws, it must be used within 24 hours, which would obviously be a problem if it's 160 oz that has thawed. And with Littles moving on to cow's milk and taking less and less breastmilk during the day, it didn't really seem necessary to have breastmilk available in Texas.

So the other day, I told Hubby that I would probably dump my frozen milk before we left California. He said, "Heck no! I've supported your breastfeeding for a year! We are not dumping any milk!"

Sometimes I love my husband :)

I knew that I had two options for getting the milk to Texas: 1) transport it myself when we fly out on Sunday, or 2) ship it ahead of time.

Transporting it myself didn't seem like a good option. After all, that is a lot of milk, and we will have plenty of other things to deal with (Littles, our cat Monessa, etc.) on Sunday.

So I decided to ship it ahead. Since Hubby will be coming home tomorrow night to help with the move, I had to get it off to him today.

It turned out to be fairly easy.

Since all my milk is frozen in glass bottles, I wrapped each bottle in bubble wrap.

I found a small hard-sided cooler in the garage that looked to be the perfect size. (You can also use a styrofoam cooler packaged in a cardboard box, but this site suggests that a hard-sided cooler does a better job of keeping the milk safe.)

I used DryIceDirectory.com to locate a nearby dry ice supplier. This turned out to be an ice cream shop!

I purchased 10 pounds of dry ice, which cost $8.50. This may be overkill, as this site says that you only need 5-9 pounds of dry ice to keep a cooler full of milk frozen, but I figured better safe than sorry.

I split the dry ice into two pieces using a hammer. I wrapped the first piece in packing paper, put it at the bottom of the cooler, and put more packing paper at the bottom of the cooler for additional padding:


Then I put the bubble-wrapped bottles into the cooler:


I wrapped the other half of the dry ice in more packing paper and put that on top. I stuffed packing paper into any holes I could find in order to make sure everything stays nice and secure in transit:


Then I wrapped tape around the cooler a few times to secure the lid in place.

Since dry ice is classified as dangerous goods, I called FedEx to double-check that they would have no problems shipping it. The phone rep sent me a label to place on the cooler to identify it as containing dry ice. I also printed out this flyer to identify the cooler as containing human milk. I edited it to add that it contained glass as well:


Then I headed over to FedEx. I had to make sure I dropped it off at a location that accepts dangerous goods. (You can identify these locations by selecting the "dangerous goods" option under "Filter your search by FedEx services" on the Find FedEx Locations screen.)

I chose the priority overnight option, so the package will arrive by 10:00 AM tomorrow. Again, this is probably overkill -- standard overnight, with a 3:00 PM arrival time, would be fine, but I erred on the side of caution.

The woman asked me if the value was more than $100, and I answered, "No." Although I was thinking in my head, "Well, really, it's priceless..."

The cooler with 17 glass bottles and about 135 oz of milk (I kept some out for Littles to drink during the rest of this week) weighed in at 28 lbs. It cost $175 to ship.

After shipping the cooler, I went to pick up Littles, and found out that she'd been having tummy troubles all day. We're guessing it's from the cow's milk. (Hubby is lactose-intolerant, so this is not a complete surprise.) So now I'm really glad that I went through the trouble of shipping the breastmilk, since it takes a lot of pressure off -- we can take our time with weaning.

Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope all that milk is still frozen when it arrives in Texas tomorrow!

Hanging up the horns

I'm heading in to San Francisco tomorrow. My old team is having a "team meeting," and Brian, my old boss, invited me to come along. See, because that team travels so much, you can easily go for weeks or months without seeing your teammates, or even Brian, for that matter. So roughly once a quarter, Brian blocks everyone's calendars so that they won't have customer visits, and holds a team meeting. The meeting is usually light on business and heavy on fun. (And alcohol.) Tomorrow, for example, there is a 1-hour meeting in the morning, and then we're taking the ferry to Sausalito for lunch (with drinks), followed by a cruise on San Francisco Bay (with drinks). I'm looking forward to seeing my old teammates again and saying goodbye.

And I'm really looking forward to not pumping.

That's right. My last pumping session was on Thursday, May 22nd -- 7 months to the day after my return to work. I have officially hung up the horns.

Tomorrow's team meeting will be a perfect bookend to my working-and-pumping career. I remember another team meeting, on October 15. It was one week before my official first day back, but as I said, these team meetings are pretty infrequent, and for this particular one, two of our senior managers came along, in addition to the rest of the team. So I made a point of attending.

That was the first day I left Littles alone with Maria, and it was very, very hard. I remember sitting on BART heading in to the office, listening to Rob Thomas' "Little Wonders," remembering how I used to sing that while dancing around the living room with Littles when she was a newborn, when my return to work seemed so far away. I couldn't believe that I had just left my little baby with someone I had only met twice.

And then there was pumping. The plans for that day were similar to the plans for tomorrow: Brief meeting in the morning, followed by a ferry to Sausalito for lunch and hanging out, then a ferry back to the office. I had hoped to arrive early to have some time to pump, but that didn't work out. I ended up excusing myself on the ferry and pumping in the bathroom. At the time, I thought that was awful. Now that I have more bathroom-pumping experience, I can honestly say that I wish all bathrooms were like the ones on the ferry. At least it was clean and had an electrical outlet.

That was at around 11 AM. I wasn't able to break away to pump for the rest of the day. I decided to forego pumping on the return ferry trip, opting to pump when we returned to the office instead. At that point, it was 5:30 PM and my breasts were about to explode. Unfortunately, the receptionist goes home at 5:30 PM, so I wasn't able to get the key to the pump room. I ended up ducking under a table in a conference room and hoping that no one would walk in on me.

This is why I'm really looking forward to not pumping tomorrow :)

It's been a long and crazy 7 months, but I've made it through, somehow carving out time and space to pump where there was none, day in and day out. Littles will go straight from breastmilk to cow's milk. No formula for my little girl.

On one of the mommy message boards that I frequent, there was a discussion a few months ago about whether moms should feel proud for making it to a year on breastmilk alone, no formula. Some respondents pointed out, "Women have been breastfeeding for millenia, so why should you feel proud if you breastfeed too?"

OK, point taken, but I doubt that my great-great-great-great-grandmother had to slip into a bathroom on a ferry and hook herself up to a plastic contraption to provide breastmilk for her baby. And I know she didn't have the lure of an almost-(but-not-quite)-as-good breastmilk alternative staring her in the face every time she went to the grocery store.

So yeah, I'm proud that I woke up every morning and turned myself inside out to give my baby the best. It was not easy, and I certainly don't look down on moms who do choose to supplement with formula or even switch completely, now that I know what goes into keeping a baby on breastmilk for a year. That doesn't mean I can't feel proud of myself for successfully taking the hard road.

Although I'm done pumping, I'm not done nursing. Littles still nurses once in the morning and once in the evening, and due to our impending move, I have no plans to wean her further in the coming weeks. I may even end up pumping again, during my business trips to Seattle, to maintain my milk supply for those morning and evening feedings.

Still, as I put my pump parts away this morning (at least temporarily) and prepared to give Littles cow's milk for the first time, I couldn't help but realize that this is the end of a big chapter in her life, and in mine.

On to the next one :)

Denial

I'm in denial about the fact that we're moving. I guess normally, there's a lot of preparation that goes into a move -- you know, like packing. But Hubby's company is paying for this whole move, so we have packers/movers coming to do all that. Our house looks totally normal right now. I have to remind myself that in just 8 days, it'll be empty.

I think Littles knows something is up, because when I picked her up today, she reached out for Maria -- something she's never done before. Maria got a sad look on her face and said, "Just one more week." That's when it really started to hit me that we're leaving.

I am sure some people would shake their heads and say, "How awful that Littles would rather be with Maria than her own mom." But I disagree. I know Littles loves me. I know she's very attached to Maria as well, and I think that's a wonderful thing. As far as I'm concerned, the more people in her life who love her, and who she loves back, the better off she is.

But boy, it does make leaving tough.

Adventures in child care

I can tell within seconds of meeting a potential caregiver whether or not s/he will work out. When we first met Maria, she immediately got a big smile on her face and reached out to hold Littles. I knew right away that she would be great. Same thing with Kay, the first backup care provider that we had a few weeks ago, when Maria was unable to come one day. Littles was having a fussy morning (teething!), yet Kay was not fazed at all. She took Littles into her room and within minutes, I heard no more crying, just the sound of Kay quietly reading a book as she rocked with Littles.

Unfortunately, I had the opposite reaction to Littles' backup care provider yesterday.

First, she was about 15 minutes late. Now, I'm chronically late as well, but when I first meet someone, I do try my best to be on time, at least that one time!

Then, she just seemed... well, uninterested and apathetic. Very much like she was doing this as a job, not because she genuinely loved children.

But she seemed nice enough and normal, so I didn't fear for Littles' safety or anything. I left, thought about Littles all day, and hoped that my first impression was wrong.

Unfortunately, when I returned in the evening, I still felt like things weren't right. She told me that Littles had been really upset for an hour in the afternoon after waking up from her second nap, which is very much unlike Littles. OK, maybe it was teething... but then, after she left, I noticed that she had completely messed up with the milk I left, by using refrigerated milk first, rather than frozen milk. Since frozen milk has to be used within 24 hours of thawing, that meant I had to dump all 8 oz of frozen milk. She also left the bag of frozen peas for Littles' lunch out on the counter, so they completely thawed and had to be tossed as well. Silly little things? Yeah. But if she was careless about the frozen peas, what else was she careless about?

I just couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. So I called back Work Options Group (the organization that contracts with my company to provide care) and asked them to assign me someone new for tomorrow and Wednesday. I really felt awful about it. Especially when the woman from yesterday called me this morning to let me know she was running late (again!). When I asked for the reassignment, I also specifically asked to make sure someone would call to tell her not to come today, but my requests have to filter through a couple of layers (me -> Work Options Group -> the local nanny service that they work with -> the caregiver herself) and I guess this request didn't make it all the way down. I lied, and told her we no longer needed care. I didn't want to get into it with her.

Anyway, I instantly felt at ease with the new caregiver and feel much better about the whole situation. I just feel really badly for the other woman. But it's my child, my baby. I need to know she's in good hands.

Weaning off the pump

Holy cow. I thought this day would never come.

As of right now, I have 226.75 ounces of milk in my freezer. There are 32 days left until Littles' first birthday, when it's OK to start giving cow's milk in place of breastmilk.

As of late, Littles has been drinking only about 10 oz of milk on average while she's with Maria. That means that if I don't pump another drop of milk, I should be able to make it to June 12th just on my frozen milk alone. If my milk supply holds up on weekends/holidays/vacation days even when I quit pumping on workdays (and it's likely that it will, at least for a while), then I'll be able to easily make it all the way to June 18th!

So I'm starting to cut back on my pumping. I'm down to just one pumping session most days. This week, I may start to cut back on how long I pump during that session, to gradually get the message to my body that it doesn't need to produce quite so much milk.

Surprisingly, I'm a litle sad about all this. Oh, sure, it will be nice not having to stress on a daily basis about whether and how I'll find time to pump, whether I'll be able to keep up with Littles' consumption, etc. But at the same time, this means my little baby is growing up.

Littles and I spent this afternoon organizing the clothes in her room, which is a pretty big endeavor because this child has a lot of clothes. I have two big boxes into which I've been throwing outgrown clothes, so I went through and organized them a little better. I came across the outfit she came home from the hospital in. The outfit she wore to her first doctor's visit. The pajamas that she practically swam in the first time I put them on. As Littles cruised and toddled around and pushed over my carefully-sorted piles, I remembered the days when I put her down and walked away and came back to find her in the same place.

Where did my little baby go?

Stay out of the minibar!

I have to go up to Seattle next week for work. Since Hubby has already relocated to Dallas, that means that Littles needs to come along with me.

Luckily, as I mentioned previously, I recently discovered that my company provides up to 100 hours of backup child care per calendar year. All I have to do is give Work Options Group a call or submit a request online, and they'll find either a daycare center that allows drop-ins or an in-home caregiver. They're nationwide, so I can get care in Seattle just as easily as at home. I love this service! If you're in charge of benefits at a company and you want to keep your working moms (and dads!) happy, you might want to look into this one.

Anyway. For next week, I'll have an in-home caregiver for Littles, since they couldn't locate a daycare center in the area that will take an infant on a drop-in basis. Of course, that means the caregiver will have to come to my hotel, so they sent me a form with some Yes/No questions to answer. These include: "My dependent may order games and/or movies on the television," "My dependent may use the Internet," and "My dependent may order food and/or snacks or beverages from room service or in-room mini bar."

I'm just imagining Littles kicking back on the couch, watching a movie, surfing the Internet, and downing a mini-bottle of vodka :)

Househunting

I should probably post a quick update on where we're at with the move.

Two weeks ago, we went to Dallas to go househunting for the weekend. We were looking at houses in a wide area, probably about 20 miles east-west and 10 miles north-south. This made things really stressful, because it meant that I had to look for daycares in a wide area as well.

We spent Saturday looking at some rather enormous houses in some rather far-flung suburbs. We eventually realized that it made no sense living 30-45 minutes away from Hubby's office in order to own a home more than twice as large as our current home, which is almost twice as large as the home we were living in when Littles was born. We simply did not need -- or want -- all that space.

We took a wrong turn on the way back to our hotel, and ended up driving right past Hubby's office. We decided to stop in to a new development about 5 minutes away, to see what they had to offer.

We both fell in love right away. The development is beautiful, and it's in a perfect location. The houses are more expensive despite being smaller, but the smaller size was exactly what we were looking for anyway, and it was worth it to us to pay more to be in such a nice place.

After some long, drawn-out negotiations (which continued even after we returned home to California), we finally reached a deal and should be closing at the end of this month!

So, with housing in place, we just have to find child care... that's a topic for another post.

First week at my new job

This past week was my first week at my new job :)

I spent Monday to Wednesday up in Seattle, where most of my new team sits. Hubby asked for a week off in between his old job and new job, so he was able to come with me and watch Littles while I worked. This worked out really nicely, as we didn't have to pay extra for child care (we still have to pay for our nanny share back home, even when we don't use it), he and Littles had some quality dad-daughter 1:1 time, and I didn't have to miss both of them. Hubby leaves for Dallas tomorrow and we'll only see him for one weekend over the next four weeks, so we're both savoring every minute with him right now.

Also, Littles caught a nasty cold over the weekend, so I was glad to be there for her. She kept waking up coughing on Sunday night, and I finally brought her into bed and cuddled her for the rest of the night. I'm sure Hubby would have done fine if he had been home alone with her, but it was nice that we could both be there.

Bringing Littles with me also made things easier from a pumping perspective. On Sunday, I brought the milk I had pumped over the weekend (10 oz refrigerated), as well as a bottle of frozen milk (8 oz). For traveling, I put the refrigerated milk in my normal cooler with an ice pack, and the frozen milk in a cooler bag that I filled with ice. I was worried about the frozen milk defrosting on the way to Seattle, since defrosted milk must be used within 24 hours. It was about six hours from the time I took the milk out of the freezer at home to the time that I got to the hotel in Seattle, and the milk was still frozen completely solid! So that worked well.

The rest of the week, I just pumped as normal. I had no problems keeping up with Littles, as she drank about 4-8 oz less per day with Hubby than she does with Maria. I've long suspected that Maria overfeeds her, and this was proof of that. Not that I really care -- I'd rather her overfeed than underfeed.

I got a room at a Residence Inn, which made things a lot easier with Littles. It had a full kitchen for preparing her solids meals, a refrigerator for keeping milk cold, a freezer for my ice packs, and a dishwasher for cleaning my bottles and pump parts. I paid a little extra out-of-pocket for a two-bedroom suite, which was nice so that Hubby and I didn't have to tiptoe around after she went to bed.

The new job is great. Hectic, but great :) I've taken over a project that's already five months behind schedule, and no one knows the status right now. Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me. But it's fun being in charge of something and attempting to move it in the right direction!

All in all, it was a good week. I can already tell that the next two months will be very busy and crazy between trying to get my project finished and the move and everything. But I'm ready for it. Bring it on!

Where I pumped today

Today was my fifth WOMEN Unlimited session. The sessions meet at a local hotel, and the hotel has been wonderful about giving me a room for the day (for free) so that I can pump.



This is by far my favorite pump spot! I usually work on my laptop at the desk (on the left side in the picture above), but I can also relax in the easy chair and watch TV if I want. Obviously, there's a sink as well, so I can wash out my pump parts when I'm done. And all the rooms have a mini-fridge for keeping my milk cold.

There was one minor problem today: Someone walked into the room while I was pumping! Luckily, I screamed, "Someone is in here!" as soon as I heard the door open, and the bathroom door was positioned in front of the main door so he couldn't see me. He called out, "Sorry!" and left immediately. Close call!

Six months back at work

I've been thinking about today, April 22nd, for a very long time.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was told early on that I should give working motherhood six months. If six months went by and I was still unhappy, then I could think about making drastic changes (such as quitting my job).

So for week after miserable week, I just focused on making it to April 22nd -- six months back at work.

Now that I'm here, I can state definitively that no drastic changes will be made. I feel really good about the balance I've found between working and motherhood. Some days are better than others, but on the whole, I'm pretty happy.

I'm getting nervous about starting my new job. I'm sure that it will temporarily upset this delicate balance that I've finally found. But I'm ready for it!

I am a fabulous mom!

I've been scouring craigslist for potential daycares for Littles in Dallas. I've found some good options. I've also found some ads that make me feel like Supermom.

Example:

I need someone twice a week from about 5p-10p (usually 9:30p)to pick my 2yr old child up from daycare and watch him in my home. Not much to do but get him ready for bed and feed him. TV is his actual sitter. Paid weekly. Please email with your rates and a little history. Great for college students.

TV is his actual sitter? For a two-year-old? Wow. Just wow.

Here's another gem, in an ad for an in-home daycare. The daycare itself sounds lovely, but my jaw dropped when I read this excerpt under "Rules":

Please do not bring any fast food for your child to eat unless you bring some for the other children. If you want your child to eat prior to being here please feed them before they get here. ( I did have a problem with one parent I babysit for because their child would not eat anything other than fast food and they would bring McDonald and the rest of the children didn't understand why they couldn't have it. I try and be fair to all of the children.)

Are you kidding me? There are parents who actually think it's acceptable to drop their children off at daycare with a sack of McDonald's every day? Boy, why have I been trying to make sure I always have some frozen veggies or something else wholesome and easy in the freezer for Maria to heat up for Littles? I should just stop off at Mickey D's in the morning and be done with it!

It's official, part 2!

So I hinted in a previous post that there was something exciting going on, besides my new job.

Well, it's now official. Hubby told his boss yesterday that he would be leaving his job!

Hubby started this job just over a year ago, when I was about six months pregnant. At the time, he was working at my company (although in a totally different division from where I work). He decided to leave with two of his co-workers to create a new start-up company.

We knew that the risk was high -- certainly, not all start-ups succeed -- but that the potential reward was high as well. We also knew it would be a lot of work.

The company has actually done very well. But all the work has really gotten to Hubby, and to me, for that matter. Particularly for the first six months of Littles' life, he traveled on business at least once a month, and even when he was home, he pretty much worked and slept. I know he was sad that he couldn't spend much time with Littles, and it was hard on me to have to shoulder the vast majority of child care responsibilities.

He started tiring of it all around Christmas, and so for the past three months or so, he's been better about putting the work down and doing more with Littles and around the house in general. It's been wonderful.

He had a business trip about two months ago to Dallas, which is where we used to live, and he ended up talking to one of his old friends. His friend works at my company and had just started managing a brand-new team. The work sounded fascinating to Hubby. And we had been talking about moving back to Dallas -- much of Hubby's family is in Texas, we both have a lot of good friends there, and it's a lot closer to my family on the East Coast.

So Hubby applied for the job and got the offer a few days ago. He'll be staying at his current job until May 5th, then taking a few days off and starting his new job in Texas on May 12th.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking, "Whaaaaaaaaa? Didn't you just get a new job?" Well, yes, but fortunately, it's a work-from-anywhere position as long as I'm willing to make trips up to Seattle. My new manager is a little concerned about the extra expense of flying me in from Dallas rather than San Francisco, and she's worried about the time zone difference between Dallas and Seattle, but I think I can effectively mitigate those risks.

The other thing you might be thinking is, "Whaaaaaaaaa? You're moving in a month?" Well, no. We're planning to move in early June. So yes, we're going to have about a month where Hubby is working in Texas but Littles and I are still living in California. It will be tough, but we have some weekend visits planned. Actually, the really tough part is that I'll probably have to travel up to Seattle during that month, but we found out that my company provides up to 100 hours of heavily-subsidized backup child care per year. So when I do need to go to Seattle, I can bring Littles with me, use the backup care in Seattle, and still pay for Maria back home (which is part of our nanny share agreement).

Hubby and I are still hashing all this out, and I'm sure many of my future posts will revolve around this pending move :)

Where I pumped today. Fourth in a series.

Yes, I pump while driving!

I only do this when I have a lengthy commute (at least 60 minutes) to a customer site or, like today, to my WOMEN Unlimited training program. It works out well, because if I can pump on the drive in, during lunch, and on the drive home, then that gives me enough pumping sessions for the day without having to take much time at all away from my work.

What I do is I put the pump on the passenger seat (you can see it on the left of the picture above) and get it all hooked up. I use an AC inverter for power -- it plugs into the cigarette lighter and provides a normal AC outlet to plug my pump into.

I then put my Hooter Hider on -- that's the white apron-like thing in the picture. It's designed for nursing in public, but it works well for pumping as well, because it has boning that helps the neck stand out so I can see what I'm doing.

Once I'm properly covered up, I get myself hooked up to the pump. As you might imagine, I have to use a hands-free kit. I usually use this hands-free pumping bra, which works very well. Today, though, I just used some hair bands. (I'll probably use the bra from now on -- the hair bands definitely didn't work as well.)

Then I'm off! All I have to do is pray that no cops decide to pull me over, because that would be hard to explain :)

As far as safety goes, I don't feel that the pump is really a distraction once I get it all set up (which I usually do while parked). But I prefer not to think about what would happen to the pump and my body if I got in an accident.

I'm glad that I have just a few more months of this craziness left.

Maybe now it's more clear why I get so excited about pump rooms with chairs, fridges, and no airbags :)

It's official!

I have a new job!

My trip to Seattle last week was actually for a job interview. (I kept it quiet until today, when I got the official offer, because I know my co-workers occasionally read this blog.) It's for a program manager position -- I'd actually have responsibility for shipping a piece of software that my company develops.

I'm really excited about it. It's a great fit for me, and a perfect "next step" in my career.

I am not as excited about the fact that it will require semi-regular travel up to Seattle, about 1-2 weeks per month. But relocating to Seattle just isn't right for our family right now. Plus, I think it will be good for Hubby and Littles to have some bonding time while I'm away!

Pumping will be a challenge, as always, but since my start date is not until May 5th, I'll be just a little over a month away from quitting pumping for good anyway.

There's some other exciting stuff going on, but again, I want to keep it quiet until everything is official :) Stay tuned...

Pumping away, away from home

I was a little nervous about the logistics of pumping while in Seattle, but it all went pretty smoothly.

I left 31 oz of milk for Littles on Sunday night, a mix of refrigerated and frozen milk.

I nursed Littles at around 6pm, just before leaving for the airport. She got one more bottle that evening before bedtime, and I pumped when I got to my hotel.

Staying in a Residence Inn made things a lot easier, since I had a full-size fridge and freezer to keep my milk and ice packs cold overnight.

On Monday, I woke up at around 8 AM and did a long pump, about 60 mins. I hoped to do another pump before my meeting at 11 AM, but I was running late and had to skip it.

I did get a short 10-minute pump break shortly after lunch, at around 1:15, so I got to check out the pump room in our Seattle office:



It's a nice setup, with two "cubicles" and a curtain, so that two moms can pump simultaneously with some privacy. There is also a small fridge, which came in handy for keeping my milk cool while I was in my meetings. No freezer, though -- I put my ice packs in the freezer in the main kitchen.

After my 1:15 pump break, which only lasted about 10 mins, I got another short pump break at 2:15 and then a longer (30 min) pump break at 3:30. My meeting ended at about 4:15, and since I was in no real rush to get to the airport, I pumped for about 20 mins until I was pretty empty. Then I pulled my ice packs out of the freezer, packed up my milk, and hit the road.

This is probably the only time you'll ever hear me say this, but thank goodness for the TSA's stupid liquids ban! I got to the front of the security line at the airport, and TSA asked me to pull out all my milk. That's when I discovered that I'd left one of my coolers of milk in the rental car! If it weren't for the liquids ban, I might not have noticed until I got home. Fortunately, I was able to run back to Avis and have them search my car for the bag, which quickly turned up. Whew!

My flight was delayed for over an hour, so I had plenty of time, even with the rental car incident. I ate dinner and then pumped for the last time at about 9:00. I pumped in the handicapped stall in the bathroom. I didn't chronicle that location for my "where I pumped today" series. Sorry.

(I've since gotten a tip that the family restrooms at most airports have a power outlet and more privacy, since they're a separate room, rather than just a stall where everyone can hear the whoomp-whoomp of your pump. I'll probably return to Seattle in a few weeks, so I'll check it out!)

With the delay, I ended up getting home shortly before 2 AM. Littles ate all 31 oz that I left, and I brought home right around 30 oz, so that worked out well. The milk in my Medela bag with a Medela ice pack was still cold when I put it in my fridge, 10 hours after I'd left the office! My Playtex Fridge-to-Go bag didn't work out quite as well -- it was no longer cold at all when I got home, but that milk was from my last two pump sessions of the day, so I figured the milk was still fine, having spent less than 10 hours at room temperature.

First business trip

Tonight is my first night away from Littles. She's sleeping at home right now, and I'm in Seattle on a business trip.

Luckily, it's a short trip. I'll be home tomorrow night, although not until after Littles is asleep.

Still, the logistics of getting away even just for 24 hours can be overwhelming. I had to find time to pack -- no more waiting till the last minute, lest Littles slip into "Mommy Hold Me" mode at that exact moment. I agonized over how much milk to take out of the freezer. Since I've never been away from Littles for a full day, I have to guess at how much milk she drinks over the course of a day. I booked a hotel room at a Residence Inn, since I know it will have a full kitchen that will let me chill my freezer packs overnight, ensuring I can keep my pumped milk cold tomorrow.

Leaving home was rough. Littles crawled after me with a confused expression as I walked out the front door, and I briefly flirted with the idea of tucking her in my suitcase and taking her with me. (Then I remembered that my pump takes up half my suitcase.)

I've done this San Jose to Seattle hop many, many times, including for my very last business trip pre-Littles. I used to have it down pat. Not anymore. For starters, they've completely reconfigured Terminal C at SJC airport in the year or so since I was last there. I almost panicked when I couldn't find my favorite dinner spot -- turns out it's now behind security, instead of before it.

I was very pleased to see that they've finally gotten a Preferred board at the Avis in Seattle, so I can go directly to my car without having to check in with an Avis agent (a process that has cost me many an hour waiting in line, usually at 1 AM when my flight has been delayed and I just want to get to my hotel). And I had a giggle when I saw that this Avis location, which used to always upgrade me to Hummer H3's, decided to give me a Prius this time :)

Some things never change, like the incompetence of TSA. I completely forgot to put my toiletries in a Zip-loc bag and was sure I'd get busted, particularly since my breast pump (which apparently looks like a bomb on the x-ray machine, based on previous TSA experiences) and all my bottles for milk collection (which they could have no way of knowing were empty) were in the same bag. But they waved it through without a secondary inspection.

I grabbed my dinner (forgetting to pay with my corporate Amex card, which is practically dusty from inactivity) and was heading over towards my gate when I saw a family with a baby right around Littles' age, and I teared up instantly. It just doesn't feel right, being without her. The family ended up sitting a couple of rows in front of me on the flight, and the baby's coos and babbles bothered me. Not in an annoyed sort of way, like loud babies on planes used to bother me as a business traveler, but in a my-heart-is-breaking sort of way.

The business of my trip presents all sorts of challenges, and I should really be focusing on those. Instead, I'm focusing on the happy Littles wallpaper on my computer.

I can't wait to get home tomorrow night. I'm going straight to Littles' room, just to see her sleeping and hear her breathing and smell the lavender from her shampoo.

Supply dip

I've had more of these than I care to remember over the past 5+ months. Sometimes for obvious reasons, like when I got the stomach flu and lost 5 pounds during three days of barely eating. Sometimes for not-so-obvious reasons -- too much stress? not enough sleep? not enough pumping? some combination? Who knows.

This week, I've been dealing with a supply dip for not-so-obvious reasons. I usually pump about 12 oz over the course of the workday (plus another couple of ounces at night after Littles goes to bed) but this week, I had two days where I was in the single digits for ounces pumped during the workday. Not good.

My prescription for bringing my supply back? Lots of nursing (thank goodness for the weekend) and pumping. Trying to rest more and stress less (ha!). Oh, and lots and lots of food. Seriously, I've been a bottomless pit these past few days, which I interpret (rightly or wrongly) as my body's way of telling me that it needs more sustenance. And who am I to argue with my body? :)

Even though I've been through this before and always recovered, I always get scared that this will be the time that my milk won't come back. I try to put those thoughts out of my head, since thinking about that possibility could turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it's hard.

The good news is that with a little over two months to go till Littles' first birthday and almost 200 oz of frozen milk in my freezer (Littles usually eats around 15 oz a day), I'm getting close to the point where even if a supply dip becomes permanent, I should be able to coast, pumping what I can and using my freezer stash for the rest.

But I don't think I'm at that point quite yet. So, pass the Cold Stone Creamery! :)

Where I pumped today. Third in a series.

I've been onsite for most of this week at my "main" customer.

Finding the time and a place to pump during onsite customer visits is always a challenge -- I often end up not pumping at all during the workday, or pumping in the bathroom. My situation at this particular customer is better than anywhere else, because I come here so often that 1) I have located their pump room and 2) they've given me an official contractor's badge with full office access (very important, because the pump room is on a different, secured floor from where I usually work, and so it would be a huge pain if I had to ask someone to let me in each time).

The room is pretty cozy:


The sink is a nice touch -- I can rinse out my pump parts when I'm done, without having to walk them over to a bathroom. I like the comfy chair, although I do miss the table from my San Francisco office. That's a fridge under the counter, but I don't use it. The sign on the door says "This refrigerator is not for food," and I figure breastmilk is food for Littles, right? So that means it doesn't belong in there. Silly, I know!

Anyway, this sure beats pumping in a bathroom.

Where I pumped today (yesterday). Second in a series.

Yesterday, I was at my company's office in downtown San Francisco.

The pump room there is much more spartan than the one at the Silicon Valley office, but perfectly functional. There's a small table, which is great for working on my laptop while I pump, and a phone with a good speaker for when I need to take conference calls. (Yes, while pumping! Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.)



On the other side of the room, there is a mini fridge. Very handy. I usually stick my pump parts in the fridge rather than wash them out after every session (I do a thorough cleaning at night), so it's nice having a dedicated fridge for this stuff rather than putting my parts next to my co-worker's lunch.


That's all! Like I said, spartan but functional.