Becoming a Stay-at-Home-Mom

This post marks Edylene reaching the ripe old age of 3 weeks and 2 days.  It is also the day before I had been planning on going back to school for the Fall semester.  Three weeks and change since popping out this little one and already heading back into the madness of grad school - granted it was going to be part time (only 3 classes), but pretty quickly upon returning home from the hospital I began to have anxiety over jumping back into my studies.  I'd been in contact with a few of my professors at school over the past few weeks and a couple days ago Jess and I decided that I would take the plunge into Stay-At-Home-Momdom (!) for the next year.

It's a big decision for me.  Once I'd decided to go back part-time, I had assumed that would be enough of a break for me - keeping school chugging along (and extending it by about 6 months) while presumably maintaining my sanity.  However, as we've said before, "We had no idea" or rather "I had no idea."  I'm sure this is common with first time mothers but there was definitely some kind of disconnect between how I thought the first post-partum weeks would play out and how they actually DID play out :)  I was also naive enough to think that Edylene was actually going to come EARLY - placing the fanciful idea in my head that she would be more like 6 weeks old when I returned to school.  Silly rabbit.

I'm still a bit awestruck that the next year will be - for the majority - Mommy and Baby time.  I got a brief twinge of some kind of feeling walking through campus on Friday to drop off my Leave of Absence forms - but I know deep down that this is the best decision for all three of us.  I'm free to get to know Eddy B, get to know her cycles and rhythms, be there for daily, weekly, monthly (!) milestones - and luckily, I can draw from the wisdom of several stay-at-home-moms whose kids seemed to have turned out alright ;)  Jesse will be pursuing National Board Certification this year (ie LOTS of extra work on top of full time teaching) and it will be easier for him to do that while Edylene is still (relatively) immobile and I can step up to take on many of the domestic responsibilities previously allotted to his sphere (though I maintain I still will NOT be doing the vacuuming).  This will also save us a bit this year on day care and in the end, we'll only be postponing my graduation for 6 months beyond what we had already planned if I had gone back part-time.  In the grand scheme of things, it seems we'll be getting a lot of benefit for a small delay in my entering the work force - Jesse WILL however, have to get a new calendar with which to count down to that happy day ;)

So, that's the latest news on our end.  Edylene is healthy and growing (up to 10 lbs already!!) - I'll do another post tomorrow about our lovely weekend with D and Emma - in the meantime, enjoy the onesie montage . . .