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but Emma gave Sarah a time out today (after a conversation that involved many pleasantries, including Emma asking Sarah ‘How was your weekend?’). 

So part of having a baby (for all women and for some lucky men) is parental leave from work for some amount of time.  April 30 was my last day at the office, and I’ll return twelve weeks after that - on July 24.

Since Sarah’s birth was induced (four days before her due date due to concerns that she would be a large baby, and that labor was very near anyway), I was able to ’schedule’ one free day off for myself before her May 2nd birth.  That May 1 was a quiet, neat day.  I just took it easy, decompressed a bit from the rush to wrap up/transition all of my projects at work, checked the hospital bags for all the necessaries, took myself out to lunch, and just tried to enjoy the last day as a mother of one child.

On May 2, well, we all know what happened that day.

And since then, I’ve been temporarily at home, caring for the special new little sweetheart in our lives. 

But another part of being on leave is getting to experience weekdays at home - a novelty for a full-time employed person like me.

One of the first things that struck me was that on the Soap Operas that I have loosely followed for years (going back to my high school and some college free days), most of the main characters turned up inexplicably married to different main characters than they were married to when I watched during the last maternity leave, about three years ago.  Not only that, but the children of the main characters, who were still tiny tots three years ago, have been rapidly aged by much more than three years and are, in various cases, now teenagers or young adults running businesses.  In the case of Victor Newman on the Young and the Restless (which is supposed to be set in Wisconsin, by the way), he has one whole new, adult son who’s turned up that I never knew about before.

Not only that, I have watched a little bit of the “new” Price is Right, with Drew Carey, instead of Bob Barker, as host.  As I first watched, I wondered how old Bob was doing.  Is he still alive?  Is he ill?  I thought about Googling him.  Then realized how ridiculous that would be.  But then realized that ‘Googling Bob Barker’ would make a spiffy blog post title.

The next thing that struck me was how bad daytime TV is.  One highlight is that a local independent station plays German-language Deutsche Welle for much of the day, so I can brush up on my German when the mood strikes.  Also, in the early days, I watched and got hooked on a few Lifetime Movie Network movies, but after the first few days, I’ve tried to stay away from the TV for the most part.

It’s more interesting, when I’m not doing dishes or laundry, and when I’m just hanging out with a sleeping baby on me, to simply pay attention to what goes on in the neighborhood, and even in our own house, during the day.

One of the greatest sources of amusements has been our cats, whose secret weekday daytime lives I am now privileged to observe.  Mostly they just sleep alot.  But Jim also makes a point of sleeping on, or in, every single baby-item in the house.  I’ve finally given up on removing him.  He just goes right back, anyway. 

And the cats are enjoying having me home.  They get to go outside and come inside throughout the day now, which has led to a new hobbie for Minnie: sitting on the outside window ledges of the house and looking in.

All this fun is going to come to an end of four weeks (minus one day).   

It’s almost a shame that a nice break of time like this isn’t built into the work year (or every other year or two or three) for every American.  It’s a healthy thing to do to just have the mental break and to refresh from the usual work routine.  Oh, well.  For me, four weeks is still a nice amount of time to enjoy, and that’s what I plan on doing.  Right along with the baby, the cats, the bad tv, the computer, and the errands and (decaf) Starbucks runs. 

With a baby who is reluctant to sleep anywhere else other than right on Mom, I know I’ll get in a lot of rest before this gig is up.

After quite some time away from the ol’ blog, I’m revving up to write lots of updates here in the coming days. 

In the meantime, feel free to mosey on over to our Flickr page to see a little of what we’ve been up to at our house. 

This view isn’t the most flattering of sweet little Sarah, but you can sure see how thrilled Emma is about being a big sister - especially a big sister who gets to help do things (like hold the baby or hand mommy diapers when it’s time for a change).  There have also been an awful lot of kisses given by the big sister to the baby sister, too!

Here’s our sweet little girl’s hospital picture and official statistics.  

Baby Sarah has arrived!

We’re home now and all doing well.

More details soon!

The whole family is getting ready for the new arrival.  Here’s Minnie dozing in one of her new favorite spots - the diaper changing part of the bassinet in the living room.

Jim often joins in by napping in the bassinet portion, itself.

I’m not concerned about the cats continuing this behavior once we bring Baby home.

They’ve both proven themselves to be pretty baby-averse.  So once we’re using this set-up for its proper purpose, I’m sure they’ll make themselves scarce.

After a record-breaking cold and snowy winter in Milwaukee, it’s now clear that Springtime has fully arrived!

The flowers are blooming, the days are warming, and the mammals are readying to give birth to their young.

Or, maybe most of the other mammals have already done it, and it’s just *me* who is readying….

Our new baby is promising to be on the larger side, and in light of that, and some other physical developments (nothing negative), my Dr. is planning to induce labor a few days ahead of the official due date, and less than one week from the time that I write this.

So we’ll be welcoming our new baby home within days.

It’s exciting.  I’m also just trying to rest as much as possible before then, and to spend some good quality time with my sweet, sweet daughter Emma.

Here are some recent pictures (taken, by the way, with our new digital camera - we have one again, yay!)

Ooooh…. three weeks since I posted anything here.

And last night, I had three big contractions that made me sure that we would be having a baby imminently.

But then they stopped - the contractions, I mean.

But I got a little reminder of what all that feels like.  (And it’s not really that good).

And a little (well, a lot) of inspiration to finish up a lot of projects at work today, since I now feel like I could ‘go’ at, really, any time. 

Luckily, I got up at 1:30 last night and mosty finished packing my hospital bag and Emma’s overnight bag, and when the time comes, we’ll all be ready to react accordingly.

With updates - and I suspect a healthy number of baby pictures - here, too, of course.

(We finally replaced our dear camera that was recently lost [let’s hear it for great deals on e-bay!], and I’ll soon be able to post real digitally-made photos to Flickr, again, and to blog them here!)

My little daughter just LOVES to sing.  And we’re happy that she has the opportunity to learn lots of new songs at her new preschool.  She often comes home and starts singing one we hadn’t heard before. 

(I loved singing and learning songs, at that age too, and there is an infamous cassette tape still in existance that records me singing (at age 3) one little song-I’d-learned-at-nursery-school after another.)  Maybe all little girls this age love to sing?

Anyway, one of Emma’s daycare notes sent home last week indicated that she had, that day, performed a “solo” of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” for her classmates at school.

Then today, when I dropped her off, her teacher told me that now, most days during song time, she breaks into a solo performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (otherwise known at our house as ‘The Dorothy Song.’). 

The teacher said that the other students all listen in rapt attention, “because this is their peer singing to them,” and that Emma’s voice (which usually carries well throughout the house, by the way) “is so quiet and sweet.”  It’s true, she has a special soft singing voice for the Dorothy Song. 

She also doesn’t quite know all the words, but has a lot of fill-in words that almost sound like the actual lyrics.  I bet it’s pretty cute to see.

By way of background, since Emma LOVES the Wizard of Oz movie AND all of the songs in it, I have been receiving requests from her for the past several months to sing to her the various favorite tunes (The Dororthy Song, the Scarecrow Song, the Tinman Song, and the Lion Song).   She also made up her own ‘Toto Song’, which she sings to the tune of the Scarecrow/Tinman/Lion Song (they all have the same tune, just different lyrics), and she fills it all in with “ruffs.”

In light of these requests, I had to go online and print out the lyrics so that I could consult them, learn them, and sing them.

Emma now often sings parts of the songs I can sing most often (I know the Scarecrow song the best, the Tinman Song next well, and am pretty hopeless on the Lion Song; the Dorothy Song is kind of hit or miss, depending on the day).

She listens so carefully (and watches my lips) when I sing. 

And I only heard it once - one day when she broke into it spontaneously from the car seat in the back of the car as we drove around - but I’ll tell you, there’s not much cuter in the world than hearing a two year old sing the lyrics (from the Scarecrow Song):

“I would not be just a nuffin’, my head all full of stuffin’, my heart all full of pain…..”

We’re enjoying the performances from our little songbird.  I bet she’ll sing lots of these to her little baby sister, when the time comes, too.