I suspect that no matter how much a mother loves her job, the end of maternity leave always carries a hint of sadness. This is the last week of mine, and looking back, I can think of few times in my life when the reality played out in such a drastically different way than I expected. Azelie was born on February 22, so about three weeks before most things in Raleigh shut down. As the weeks unfolded, I have tried my best to maximize any opportunities I had to do “maternity leave things,” whether that meant sleeping in when Azelie did, letting her nap in my arms sometimes, or reaching for a book instead of my laptop in the very few moments when naptime/quiet time (did I mention Charlie dropped his nap right as school closed? RIP restful afternoons!) overlapped. I had set a low bar for the postpartum season, and that was lowered even further as the demands on my time skyrocketed, but I’m so grateful for any little moment I got to spend soaking up our sweet little girl. Especially with summer on the horizon and more hints of normalcy beginning to appear around us, I’m hopeful I can take what I’ve learned about juggling competing demands into the next season with grace and gratitude.
April Goal Progress
1. Pray the Angelus and Divine Mercy Chaplet daily. (Not quite daily, but often!)
2. Celebrate Easter and my 30th birthday with JOY!
3. Have some photos printed from our newborn session and hang art/photos in our bedroom and entryway hallway.
4. Reach 5000 steps per day. (We went for walks almost every day, but I didn’t always track them. Still counting this a win and hoping to keep it up.)
5. Celebrate Holy Week at home intentionally.
6. Download a few Kindle books to read while nursing.
May Goals
1. Wake up before Azelie as often as I can so I have time for prayer journaling.
2. Go strawberry picking again and then make a dairy-free strawberry shortcake with Charlie.
3. Clean the rooms in our house that get less traffic (and, ahem, therefore haven’t been cleaned in a while).
4. Start brainstorming a design for the guest room/my office.
5. Do some intentional summer planning.
6. Catch up on sharing recent Blessed Is She posts + write my post for June.
7. Practice grace and gratitude as I head back to work.
8. Finish reading two fiction books + start reading a chapter of Les Misérables every day. There are 365 chapters so Dave and I are reading through it together in a yearlong, two-person book club :)
Hope you can pencil in a summer visit from everyone’s favorite aunt!!!
I can’t wait to see your plans for the guest room/office! I’m sure it will be lovely. And I also love the idea of your two-person book club!!
I LOVE the idea of doing a couples year-long book club! My husband and I are “debating” reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy together, but it’s also LONG (and the chapters are long too) but this inspires me to come up with a creative couples book club solution.
I’d also be curious to hear about your back-to-work routine and how being a working (at home??) and new mom is going in the coming weeks on the blog.
Dave started reading The Hobbit out loud to me when I was sick and tired in my first trimester of pregnancy! It is taking us a long time to get through (partially because we forget about it for weeks at a time :P) so I wouldn’t recommend that as a quicker method, but it is really nice :)
I will definitely keep y’all posted on how being back at work goes. I’m part-time and from-home, but working both with two kids and without childcare is definitely going to be an adjustment!