Birthdays and back to work...

Well, it's day 2 at work for me... Thankfully, my parents are still in town, so leaving Hai in the morning with Grandma, Granddad and the nanny makes it much easier to go to work. Though by about noon I'm ready to go home to get a smile from my boy. But he seems to be doing fine, though I miss waking up with him in the morning vs. getting up while he's still asleep...

Hai had his "official" first birthday on Saturday. (Jan. 5 was actually the day that Hai was left at the orphanage, they didn't really know his actually birthday, but estimated he was 15 days old, so he's really about 12months and 15 days.) I need to get the pictures from Jaap and off my video camera to upload, but suffice to say that cake was consumed and readily applied to his clothes. We went to Chuckie Cheese, which seemed a wise choice on a very, very, rainy day. Hai was quite taken with the whole Chuckie Cheese experience. He just took everything in. Not even the animatronic mouse scared him (though I was a bit unnerved by it). And the adults all agreed that their pizza is actually pretty good!

My mom also had her birthday on Wed. We went up to Stanford Shopping Center and walked around to get a little fresh air and then had an early dinner at the Fish Market restaurant. Hai really seemed to like the Fish Market. He even had his first taste of tilapia - he seemed to really like it, so I've got to get some of that for him.

My mom has also sorted things out so she can stay another week with me. This is a huge help to me as I've got 2 7am meetings next week and a dinner and all day staff meeting. Hopefully, my Dad will be able to survive on hamburgers and pizza while she's here with me and Hai. :-)

Anyway, coming back to work has been interesting and in many ways, comforting. In the past 3 months my entire life has been turned upside down, I became a mom, took 3 months off, and spent my days waiting for the sun to come out so I could go to the park or take a walk with Hai. Now I come back to work and find that not much has changed in 13 weeks away... maybe that's not what everyone at work would want to hear, but in a way it is comforting to me... and maybe a little bit of job security :-)

Love all,

Melissa