Head is spinning

I'm just thinking about how much has gone on in the last week... and it makes my head spin! It's not just "things" that have happened or are happening, but it's also just where my mind is at.

Let's get to it, shall we?

1. Maya - my dear, sweet love. Oh, how I love this girl! Let me count the ways... She is SUCH a good little baby... her smile makes me melt... she has such good spirits... she sleeps 11-12 hours a night (I know this can change!)... I can just go on and on. I love this girl more than I ever could have imagined, and then some. It's so cliche to say it, but everything I do, I do it for her (cue Bryan Adams). It's true. I get up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready for work before she wakes up... I go to work with high hopes and ambitions... and I get out of there on the dot so I can hurry my little butt home to scoop her up. She is my true love! I just can't get enough of her.

We celebrated her 3 month birthday last Sunday... She wasn't much in the mood for pictures, but she allowed us one behind-the-scenes shot.


The paparazzi kept pestering her while she was on her break, and she did not appreciate one bit.


LOL. Ha! I love her faces.

2. Nanny - So, I was back to work this week (see #3 below). We've had our nanny working two days a week for the past month, as she needed to start earning some money, and it gave us an opportunity to get used to each other. Well, this week it was 100% nanny. I was not around to give her a hand, let her eat lunch, etc. Overall, I think she did well. I think it totally wiped her out though... it's different when you are taking care of a baby 100% on your own. I think Maya did OK too, and for this it was really good that she started working with us a month ago. I have log sheets that she fills out detailing stuff about Maya's day (how much she ate, "bathroom breaks", naps, etc).

So, more about the nanny. She is a great cook! And she cooked the 3 nights that she was here. I got home from work at 4ish, scooped up little Maya, and told the nanny to go rest. So for 2 hours or so, she was upstairs, resting, watching TV, whatever. Then she came down, and cooked! Whee! Monday night it was Chicken Milanese, or Schnitzel, Tuesday night it was lemon garlic Sole, and last night it was some Bolivian chicken dish with onions, green peas, and tomatoes. All were great (though the Bolivian dish wasn't my favorite) and it's SO nice having dinner made for you. It's great that she's a worker bee and really doesn't know how "not" to do something, because it would make me feel really uncomfortable if I had to ask her to cook or something. She just steps right up to the plate. She also cleans too. Pretty sweet deal.

So you may be wondering, do I have any reservations about the nanny? Well.... a few. She calls Maya "Mi bebe." Which means "my baby." Ugh. I hate it. She's not "tu bebe", she's MY BABY! I mentioned this to my mom a few weeks ago when I noticed she did it for the first time, and my mom scoffed at my complaint, telling me it was really silly to worry about it. Well my mom came by the house on Monday to see little Maya (and also check on the nanny), and she did it in front of my mom. And it also really irritated her! So the other day I told her "No es tu bebe... Es mi bebe!" Excuse the poor Spanish. But I basically told her that Maya is my baby, not hers. I don't care if you want to call her "my doodlebug" or "my paycheck", but she is not your baby. I think I took her by surprise when I told her, but she stopped it... until this morning. She said it again, and I told her again. Let's hope it stops.

Another thing that is a bit annoying is that I feel she is trying too hard to prove that Maya likes her. When I get home and I grab little Maya, I want that to be mama baby time... not mama, baby, nanny time. But nanny just hangs out. And is in Maya's face, trying to get her to smile. It's like she's trying to show that Maya prefers her over me or something! H says I'm overreacting, and that she is just new at the job and wants to prove that she is doing a good job. I can appreciate that. I started noticing this on Monday, so when I got home on Tuesday, I took Maya and told her to go upstairs and rest... no chitchat. I didn't let her help with Maya the rest of the night, even though she wanted to help. I feel like when I'm home, it's time for her to step back... clean, cook, whatever. It seems like she's hopefully getting the point.

Overall I like her and I think she's a good lady. It's a transition for all of us. The most important thing is that she is good with Maya, and it seems as if she is.

Oh, and we're getting nanny cams installed tomorrow. Just sayin'....

3. Work - Yes, the dreaded "back to work" week arrived. You all know how much I was dreading this. I think for the last 5 weeks I was seriously stressed about it. Well, maybe all the energy I expelled about it in advance of actual D-Day helped, because it really wasn't bad. Dare I say that it was actually enjoyable?

There was definitely some stress surrounding it. Getting ready for work Monday morning was a whole event Sunday night. I had lunches packed for H and I... bottles for the pump ready to go. My outfit picked out. Everything I'd need neatly arranged by the door. A quasi-schedule of how things were going to go in the morning all established in my head. Going to sleep at 9:30 pm. Waking up at 4:30 am. Unable to go back to sleep. Yes, you heard that right. Out of bed at 5:20 am, thinking I'd just enjoy a leisure cup of coffee in the dark. Decided to get ready in case Maya decided she was going to have an early morning. Good thinking, because Maya did have an early morning. Phew.

It was nice to see everyone at work. I'm currently not in my office as another gal who is pregnant took over my office while I was gone. She goes on maternity leave in March and I'll get it back.

I spent the week getting caught up on my projects, and getting back in the mix. I am a bit irritated, because the guy who took over my accounts while I was gone seems not to understand that I am back now and they're mine again. In our department, historically we have only had account managers... who did everything from customer contact, proposals, teleconferences, to internal planning and project management/scheduling/coordination. A few months before I left on maternity leave, a technically-oriented person from our organization expressed an interest in joining Sales & Marketing. My boss liked the idea of having someone who was well-versed in technical detail and who could manage and get through a lot of the crap Sales and Marketing has to go through in a much swifter fashion. We all agreed - he would function as an "internal" project manager.

Well, when I went on leave, our boss put him in on my projects. I was fine with it, since he's a nice guy and I felt confident he would do a good job. And he did. I bought him a nice bottle of Don Julio to thank him.

So now I'm back and there is a bit of a struggle on his part to let these projects go. I told him that I was back and "thank you very much", and he will still be in on these projects. But he's more of a support function for the account managers. I don't think he gets it. We had a telecon with one of my biggest accounts today and he was trying to run it! Granted, he set it up before I came back to work, but it still really annoyed me.

I mentioned this to my boss today... that I was concerned there was too much of a gray area between the "account manager" function and the "project manager" function, and he basically said he hasn't really worked it out in his head yet. Ummm, he's the department head. THAT'S HIS JOB. He also said that another coworker of mine also expressed some of the same concerns to him. Ugh. So I think I'm going to chat with her on Monday so we can be a cohesive front on this. I do not want to lose my accounts to some guy just because I went on maternity leave. I worked hard to develop the relationship with these people and it's what I like most about my job. And boss had better get to delineating some rules about job function. I mean, you are in a position to manage people only if you know how to manage them.

Sigh... it's a little annoying, but I hope it will be resolved.

Just because I need some cheering up now, here are some recent pics of mi bebe!