Today is the last day of my two month paternity leave. Yeah, I neglected to post about going on paternity leave, or about anything that's happened while I was on paternity leave, or for that matter about anything that's happened since Eleanor was born. Clearly I'm a bad blogger.
In any event, things have been happening, I've just been a bit distracted. Eleanor is now 5 months old, she's progressed from being a little lump of baby to a small person with likes and dislikes who is quite annoyed that she can't effectively move around on her own yet. She's actually rolling over on demand for a while now, but she's still a little ways off from being able to crawl, which infuriates her to no end. On the bright side though, she's now able to play with things, she loves her exersaucer and it's really cute to see her interacting with all the toys built into it, and she'll happily amuse herself for quite some time trying to chew on her blue whale bath toy (apparently it's just cooler than the orca or hammerhead bath toys).
It's been interesting being at home with the kid for the past few months. You really do get a better sense of the ongoing progress she's making, every now and then Joanna will comment about something or other that Eleanor is doing, and I'm like "yeah, she's been doing that for a few days now". You don't necessarily notice to the extent that you'd comment on whatever the new accomplishment was, but you definitely see it all happening, which is cool. On the other hand, it's a thankless, tedious job in many ways. Eleanor's smile can light up a room, and she hands it out often these days, but there's still the incredibly frustrating parts of the day where she's whiny and doesn't want to nap, or is bored with the house and doesn't realize that it's snowing and we can't go someplace, or just really wants to be entertained by someone other than whoever has been with her all day, which tends to happen about an hour or so before Joanna gets home.
I'm incredibly glad to have had the chance to take this time off to be with the kid, but I'm also looking forward to getting back into the swing of my job. While I'll miss getting to spend this much time with the kid, it'll be nice to talk to people during the day who can actually talk back, and needless to say it'll be good to get back to working on all the things I put on hold when I went on leave. I'm pretty out of the loop at work at this point, so it'll be interesting to see what has happened to the projects I was working on. It'll also be nice to have my commute back. It may seem strange to say it, but that train ride is really just built in time to myself, and I miss it.
Anyway, the napping child appears to have awoken, so that must mean it's time for another bottle. The endless cycle continues ;-)
