Reaching Out

Sorry that I’ve been away so long, once again. Time has just been flying by and every minute seems to be filled these days. Here it is in writing: I’m going to attempt to start posting more regularly again. I officially call my blogging maternity leave to an end and will post something, even if it’s trivial or brief, at least every other day from now on, pinky swear. I’ve missed it and now I just need to make time for it.

I didn’t really go into any details of my Mom’s visit, but as I wrote earlier I really having her around. Not only was it great to have the extra set of hands, but it was also wonderful to see her get such joy from Liam, her first and possibly only even, grandchild. I am the first person to admit that I have a few control issues that I really am trying to get over. However, I felt incredibly comfortable letting her take care of and calm Liam and reassured me since she did it with such ease. It may be that she is fantastically talented in this direction or it may just be that she just does what I would do and it therefore puts me at ease. Liam certainly enjoyed the extra bit of loving, as my Mom held him and sang to him as often as she could, trying to get in as much time with him as she could before we see her again for my baby brother’s* wedding in September. I also really enjoyed her company. We’ve always shared quite a bit with each other, but I believe we reached a new level of closeness, for which I am grateful.

Having her around also made me realize that I had been feeling isolated an a little lonely in my new role. While I am an introvert, I’m not a hermit. I wasn’t taking Liam out of the house nearly enough to maintain my own sanity. Partly this was because I was trying to protect him from germs, which I am relaxing about, but will relax more about after he’s had his first round of immunizations, and partly it’s because getting him and me and all his gear organized and out the door and arranged around his feeding and sleeping schedule was just a little overwhelming for me. However, we went out most days that my mom was here and it got me to feel a little more comfortable with outings. He’s also awake more often and I’ve gotten better organized so that instead of trying to bring everything with me, now I  just bring the bathroom sink in lieu of the kitchen one.

I also believe I wasn’t socializing enough because frankly I kind of have a unilateral focus in my life right now and I barely have any idea of what else is going on in the rest of the world making it a little difficult to hold up my end of a conversation. I have no doubt that my childless friends must be getting tired of hearing me talk about Liam and everything baby. So, I’m trying to get to know other new and veteran moms since the only friends I have at the moment that are mothers of young children live over a thousand miles away and are very busy with changes going on in their own lives. In the past couple weeks I’ve joined recently formed Mom’s Meetup Group in Cedar Park and a more established SAHM Meetup Group for the whole NW Austin area. I’ve gotten involved with an on line community called Austin Mama’s which is also proving to be fun, however they have so much traffic that all I really can do is lurk. So I’m well on my way to making some new friends that I can talk mommy stuff to without feeling like I’m going to bore them to death. Hopefully this will open up the rest of my brain to discuss other topics. They’ve already turned out to be a great resource for information about what’s available locally and I’ve gotten some good parenting advice.

I’ve also started work back up again, but more about that later.

*Despite the fact my “baby brother” is going to be 27 in just a few weeks and would kill me if he heard me refer to him by this term I have decided that I can and will use this term until the day that he becomes a regular reader of my blog. Which isn’t going to happen anytime soon, so I should be safe.