A 10 week LOA goes by about as quickly as 1 day back at work, but at least I know that my pants will fit tomorrow.

We decided to treat the final 3 days as a vacation and ate out a lot, consumed too much ice cream, drove down to the IKEA in Tempe, and took the boys to the train park again. (IKEA used to seem so far away, but soon it will be just another piece of the scenery during my loonnnggg drive to work. Now that I've stopped counting down to the end-of-maternity-leave, I can start counting down to the start-of-my-new-position at the far, far, far away location. Five weeks to go...).

I also read Megan McCafferty's final Jessica Darling installation, Perfect Fifths. It wasn't the same- or as good as the other books in the series- or maybe I've changed too much to appreciate them. Spoiler alert: I really didn't want Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie to end up together. And I skimmed the third of the book that was nothing but dialogue between Marcus and Jessica.

The baby just started crying. It's that time of night when he cries uncontrollably and I feel awful because there's nothing I can do except hold him very tightly and wait it out...

Maternity leave officially ended just under two weeks ago, and my post-maternity-leave vacation time runs out this weekend so it's back to work on Monday. Stress already settled in: the conflicted feelings over working full time, panic over whether or not I can meet expectations at work while balancing a newborn and toddler at home, separation anxiety from the new baby... I slept a total of 3 hours last night even though the baby slept a respectable 5 hours, then 3 hours.

Confession: part of my sleepless panic was worry over whether or not I have any work pants that will fit my post-pregnancy booty. I should probably check into that or else I could be wearing a maternity dress on my first day back, and I don't think even the cutest heels in the world will distract from the fact that it's a maternity dress.

Yesterday I nursed at a McDonald's in Ahwautukee. J reminded me of a study that showed kids liked most any food better if it came wrapped in McDonald's packaging- even vegetables like carrots and broccoli. He wondered whether or not Baby would like my breastmilk better when he nursed in McDonald's. I thought that perhaps I'd need to first tape a Big Mac wrapper to chest.

The best part of this ensemble is that he insisted on wearing it during a trip to Sears with Dad. I can no longer complain about the day he wore swim trunks to Target with me. A diaper hat definitely trumps swim trunks.