Virtual Associate...

I've been working from home for about a month now. I am very aware of how lucky I am to have a job (and a boss!) that allows me to work remotely. Being home has allowed me to continue working at this point in my pregnancy; if I were still trying to go to the office every day with the insane schedule I was keeping, I'd most certainly be on bedrest by now. My body just doesn't like being pregnant after 30 weeks. Go figure.

I worked from home for a while at my last job, so the whole home office thing isn't foreign to me. Lots of folks ask me how I resist the temptation to do laundry, websurf, or watch TV while I'm home. I guess I'm just over such temptation--if it's Monday through Friday between 7:30 and 4, I'm working, no matter where my butt is parked. If I have a free hour, I'm more likely to try and unearth my inbox than do a load of laundry.

I will admit, however, that it takes some time to get back into the swing of the home office environment. Here are some of the things I've noticed in the last few weeks...


Things I like about working from home:


1) It's QUIET (well, it's quiet when my bathroom isn't under construction).

2) I get a lot done because of reduced "drive-by" visits from people. Drive-by visits ("um, got a minute, Kristine?...) are notorious agents of time suckage in an office environment. I still get drive-by phone calls and IMs, but nothing like actually being there.

3) I can wear my PJs until it's time to go get Rachael from daycare. Big perk.

4) I can make myself as comfortable as I want (or as comfortable as I can...) by moving from chair to chair, sofa to sofa...until my spine and my baby find a position that's mutually acceptable. Biggest perk.

5) I can make macaroni and cheese for lunch.


Things that suck a little about working from home:

1) It's QUIET (after years of working in the eye of an office/hospital hurricaine, I fear that I thrive on chaos).

2) As much as I whine about drive-bys, it IS harder to be in-touch with those who report to me when we don't have that daily face-to-face interaction (Thank goodness for AIM Instant Messenger...).

3) Phoebe. Phoebe is my very needy cat. She thinks I'm here during the day to play with her, exclusively. She drives me nuts. She also sends non-sensical Instant Messages to my co-workers by standing on my keyboard while I'm making macaroni and cheese.

4) Door-to-door salespeople. I had no idea my doorbell rang so much during the day. GO AWAY!! I do not want to buy your raffle tickets, magazines, meat, kites, or any of the other crap that's been shuffled up to my porch for the last five weeks. I'm actively seeking a tasteful "no freaking soliciting" sign for my front door. And before you ask, I've tried just ignoring the doorbell. Guess what--they keep banging and ringing. I think they see me in the den and just assume I'm taking extra time to find my checkbook before answering the door. Awesome when you're on a conference call with 50 other people and you have to excuse yourself to tell Jerome from the Youth Center Basketball League to piss off and get off your porch.

Anyway...so working at home is working out. I do miss the interaction with non-furry life forms (sorry, Phoebe), but hey--this is much better than being a prisoner on bedrest! :)

What Breech Baby?

YAY! Breechy baby changed her mind and, after two painful evenings of her shifting around, she is finally head down. My MD did a quick u/s on Tuesday to confirm; if baby was still head up, MD was going to schedule my c-section. So, instead of a head in my ribcage, I have feet in my ribcage. Equally painful, but at least now I'm not guaranteed a c-section.

Speaking of head down--check out this pic. Rachael isn't quite on board with pillows yet...some nights yes, some no. I couldn't help but take this picture when I went in to check on her several nights back and found her like this:

At least her feet were resting comfortably on her new pillow... ;-)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! This Easter was particularly neat because Rachael is 'getting it.' The fun, kid-centric part of Easter is pretty lost on tiny kids (it's more for the parents...admit it. We get to dress them up and show them off!). But this year we hid eggs for her to find on Easter morning and she was ALL over it! I only hid 15 plastic eggs (filled with Gerber puffs) and wished I'd hidden more, since she was so engaged.

This is also the first year we've dyed eggs with her--no way was I going to put a one-year old in front of egg dye...but in spite of her having some very blue fingers, it wasn't a traumatic mess and she had SO much fun. Pretty neat! I mean, check out this smile:



Hope you all had a Happy Easter, too!

Baby in 3D and 4D!

Being a frequent flyer at the ultrasound office, I once again got a chance to be a guinea pig for the ultrasound techs who are learning the 3D and 4D equipment. On Wednesday of this week, the application engineer from Philips (ultrasound vendor) was at the specialist's office doing training...nifty coincidence. Being a sucker for any chance to see my kiddo on the big screen, I was agreeable to let them train on me. :)

They started with the standard 2D stuff (to cover my REAL reason for being there...evaluate blood flow, take measurements, etc), then they took some 4D images. Those were neat, but, like 3D, the baby has to be in the perfect position to see anything much. Our daughter bashfully kept her arms in front of her face for quite some time before relenting and allowing us to oooohhh and ahhhh over her. :)

4D is useless for taking still images (it's intended for observing movement), so when they switched back to 3D, we were able to get this pic. I know it's hard to discern at first (we had the benefit of watching her move into this position before the still image was snapped), but it's a picture of her sucking on her hand, kind of looking down. You can see her chunky baby arm and her knee pulled into her chest. Pretty neat-o...


NOT so neat-o is that little darling is breech. BREECH! C'mon.... While it's still possible that she'll be a good girl and move into a head-down position, there's a better chance at this point that she won't and I'll end up having a c-section. I chatted with a few friends who had breech babies and went through the process of having the baby turned--all of them commented that they ended up with extensive bruising and...c-sections. My MD isn't fond of the manual manipulation thing either.

So, fingers crossed that she decides to do a somersault sometime VERY soon!! As convenient as it would be to schedule a c-section and be able to plan around that, I'm not interested in major abdominal surgery if I can avoid it...

Ending on a positive note, here's a pic of SUPER RACHAEL in her sparkly green cape. My friend Kathleen from work made this for her...Rachael loves twirling around in it. Thanks Kathleen!

Art and Baby Prep

My brother reminded me that I'd promised to post pics of Rachael's St. Paddy's Day art project...egad! Sorry for the delay! Here's the "mommy and me" project that Rachael and I did:

You might guess that Rachael didn't do much of this by herself...and you'd be right. Rachael painted the shamrock from the stencil provided, then I found my type-A self unable to let her "toddler-ize" the rest of the project. So Dave and Rach painted something else while I finished up the border of the plate. She had fun and didn't care if she was painting the plate or her paper plate...it was still a fun thing for us to do together.

In other news, we've been slowly excavating infant gear from the basement. First was the bassinet. Here's a pic of Rachael helping her daddy get the bassinet ready for Baby Sister:

I know I said this many times while pregnant with Rachael, but this time I really mean it: WHERE ARE WE GOING TO PUT ALL THIS BABY STUFF? Bassinet, swings, high chair, bouncy seat, pack n play...I need a 3000 sq ft house! But...it's cool. If one is going to have clutter, let it be baby clutter. :-) So worth it!