August
I went back to work on 8/1, and Hadley started daycare. It was incredibly hard to go from seeing her 24/7, down to an hour or two per day, but I pressed on, and so did Hadley and John.
Hadley rolled over on her three-month birthday, and has insisted on rolling onto her stomach to sleep ever since. We enjoyed a few visits with friends and family on the weekends, as evidenced by these pics.
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| Hadley and her Grandma Morgan |
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| Hadley and Prudence (John and Kerry's babe) at a backyard BBQ |
September
We started getting used to the daycare routine, but we still didn't like it. I would get home with Hadley in the evenings around 6:15-6:30, and we'd try our darndest to keep her up to spend some more time with her, but she really likes to go to bed around 7:00-7:30. In an effort to find ways to spend more time with her, I asked my employer if I could work part time. I had to wait a while for the powers that be to make a decision, so I tried to be patient...
In the meantime, we enjoyed a weekend visit from Nana and Papa, went downstate to see Hadley's cousins Drew and Luke, and celebrated Hadley's Grandma Morgan's birthday with her, too.
Hadley started doing the army crawl, which was pretty cool.
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| Nana and Hadley, Labor Day weekend |
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| Modeling my cute dress from Aunty M on one of the last warm days in September |
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| Cousin Drew, at two months old |
A friend's child's birthday party brought us to the zoo on 10/1. Here are a couple cute photos:
Hadley was six months old on October 8th, and the month was celebrated in style. We had visits from both Auntie M and Nana, we celebrated Hadley's Great Grandma Morgan's 93rd birthday, and had fun dressing Hadley up for Halloween. I know that she won't remember it, but we sure had fun with it. She had two costumes this year: 1) a motorcycle chick, and 2) an elephant. Both costumes were adorable in very different ways. :-)
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| Watching the Tigers- they lost :-( |
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| Looking Mischievous |
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| Happy half-birthday, Hadley! |
November passed in somewhat of a blur, but the main mood in my mind was "waiting". Waiting for an answer from my employer about whether or not I could work part time, that is. It had looked promising when I had asked at the end of August, but I still hadn't received an answer either way. We went to Michigan to spend Thanksgiving with my side of the family, and decided that I would talk to the "powers that be" on the following Monday. We had been teetering on the decision for a while, but we had finally come to the decision that it was either "part-time" or "stay-at-home", because full-time just wasn't working for our family. So I went to my boss on that Monday, hopeful for a positive answer to my part-time question from three months before. Unfortunately, they couldn't make it work, and I gave my six-week notice.
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| Hadley at 7 months |
December
With the weight of the employment decision behind us, we could finally see the horizon, and our moods picked up significantly. We traveled to Michigan a LOT...three times in a six week time period. Because of all those trips in such a short span, John still doesn't want to commit to driving back again any time soon. We were there for Thanksgiving, then two weeks later we came back for a friend's wedding (congrats to Dan and Angela), then two weeks after that for New Years weekend and to celebrate a belated Christmas with my family. In between, we saw lots of the Morgan side, too. It was an incredibly busy, yet happy, month.
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| Hadley's first ride on the el: on our way downtown to Christkindl Market |
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| Hadley at eight months |
January
I worked one last week in January, and my favorite coworkers provided me with a GREAT send off. As excited as I was to be at home with Hadley, there was a big part of me that was sad, too. I will blog about that another time, though.
I have now been home with Hadley for about three weeks, and it has been quite blissful! I have not nearly as much time to myself as I imagined I would have, and this new "job" is quite demanding. However, it is incredibly rewarding, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Cheers to new chapters in life! Here are a few pics of what Hadley and I have been up to in the last three weeks:
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