Upward Mobility

I've spoken to a couple of folks about my alleged "settled" decision to go part-time, as evinced by my blog musings.  When I think about the things I've shared versus all the things I've omitted on this blog, I guess I can understand how that's the idea that was coming across. 

Truly, it's one of the more frustrating things about blogging now that I'm back at work.  On maternity leave, almost anything could be blog fodder.  I was self-employed, and my employer was certifiably nuts, so I had creative license to poke fun at anything I wanted.  Now that I'm back in BigLaw, and various colleagues read my blog, I do feel somewhat constrained in what I'm willing to say here.  As I may have said a while back, I generally would like to refrain from gushing or from endless ranting.  But the truth is that most times that I feel like blogging, one of those extremes would be the likely end result.  So I have to bide my time waiting for a (rare) moment of peace or rationality.  Or a moment like this, when a sense of triumph at having finished one assignment and depression about having to turn to another matter before sleeping make for a bizarre equilibrium in my psyche.  Now is the time to blog.

I've made one very important decision about part-time.  Which is that I will not arbitrarily force myself to decide by mid-July, as I had previously planned.  For reasons that I won't go into in this forum, I had been feeling a great deal of pressure TO go part-time, whether I wanted to or not.  But I have since determined that I won't be rushed on this.  I've just barely completed two months back at work.  I need to be okay with giving myself more time.  So that's that.

In other, non-work news, X is just delightful on every level.  Every morning, he wakes up happy and sits in his crib, singing to himself until I'm ready to get him.  When I enter the room, he instantly pulls up on the side rail and grins this thousand-megawatt smile, squealing till I pick him up.  Another mommy blogger recently described the resulting feeling so perfectly, I'll steal her expression: "People ruin their lives with illegal drugs because they want to feel that feeling I feel when I'm holding [him] in the morning."

X is now babbling like a brook, having learned "Dada" over the weekend.  I took it upon myself to teach him this word in time for Fathers' Day.  Quick study that he is, he learned it a week early.  So now he goes "DADADADADADADA" at the top of his lungs all the time.  I see no evidence that he attaches this word to Dad.  But he does see that we both get delighted when he says it, so by all means, keep on saying it, kid.

Tomorrow will mark a somewhat sad change in our day care routine.  Miss A, X's primary caregiver, is moving away to get married.  Dad and I really, really liked her.  And X seemed so fond of her too.  It's going to be a real bummer to see her go.  I know some other great person will likely take her place, but I'll still never forget the person who made it so easy and tear-free for me to leave X in day care for the first time.  She was terrific.

Okay, this post has bounced all over the place, but let's just pretend that I'm saving my truly succinct and coherent writing talents for the piece of phenomenal legal writing I'm about to attempt to pull off between now and dawn.  Har har.

Mama, it looks like my bath is ready.

What are you waiting for, woman?  Airlift me in!