Catching Up

Oh me, oh my. I haven't blogged in five months. Whoops! Let's briefly catch up with some of the highlights.

The little guy turned one in February. 

ONE. 

We only had one H magnet. Improvise.

I went big on the smash cake. He ate literally one bite.

In late February I went back to my doctor for a Clomid fix, and just a few weeks later we learned that Baby Brez #2 is on the way!

Super pumped big bro.

The lil' nugget at 6 weeks, 6 days.

The giant nugget at 16 months. 

I am due in mid-December. Will is slated for another training in Alabama, this time for five weeks, at the end of September through October, when I'll be starting the third trimester. I already gave my firm notice that I'll be leaving and my last day is September 25. So I'll get some time with just me and Little Will again before the next baby comes. Frankly, I can't imagine having to do daycare drop-offs and pick-ups by myself on top of the stress of meeting billable hour targets. He goes to the daycare on base now, which adds a good thirty minute to my commute if there's no line to get into the gate (there's always a line in the morning). Add in all the rest of the single parenting obligations and it's just not happening! And the good Lord saw fit to add in Will's 2-year pay raise beginning in September and it was kind of a no-brainer that I should quit the full-time gig. Everything lined up to make it an easy decision.

How has work been going? At first, I was really enjoying the change of pace from stay at home mom life. Little Will weaned pretty quickly once the separation started, making the full transition at about 11 months. At the same time he started sleeping through the night! I didn't have my Illinois license yet, so I was given a lot of interesting research projects off the bat and was writing substantive motions. I think in my first two months I wrote something like 10 substantive motions. I really enjoyed that. However, once I ran out of that work, I still had no license, so I was confined to doing non-billable research projects and/or mindless law clerk/paralegal work. It was pretty lame. I didn't get sworn in to the Illinois bar until mid-April. At that point I was assigned my own insurance defense fender bender type cases. I got like 5 cases in two weeks so those kept me fairly busy, which I enjoyed. Being busy. Not really the substantive work. Buuut, as usual, once I worked them up there wasn't much left to do but wait for medical records to come in. I would sit at my desk during the day wishing I could just leave, and shoot out the door right at 5. I told my boss about a month ago that I was leaving in September, and a couple weeks ago he told me that he was taking all my cases and reassigning them to other associates so they could see them through. That's fine with me. Now I've been doing project-based work for partners, which has been fine. The problem is that they still want me to hit a certain billable hour target, but I don't have enough work to hit it all the time. That can be pretty stressful. But I only have a few months left with the firm, so I'm not sweating it!… too much… I need to keep all my options open when it comes to career. We just don't know what the future holds, i.e., where we'll be living next year, what the financial picture will look like, what life with two under two will look like! I'm all about keeping all the doors open at this point. 

And the pregnancy. I will have to start updating a little bit to compare the two. Right now I'm 13 weeks and 1 day, and I look about 18 weeks pregnant with Little Will. I have big important plans to find maternity work pants this afternoon. What a life. Morning sickness was pretty intense for about a month, just like my first pregnancy, but this time with added horrible stomach cramps. I had only gained two pounds in the first 11 or so weeks, but then the super munchies kicked in and I've gained a couple more pounds in the past 2 weeks. Still half what I gained in the first tri with Baby Billy Brez. But with my appetite lately, I'm not holding out hope that I will avoid gaining 50 pounds this time. My hunch is that it's a girl. We will find out (and tell everyone!!) in 6 short weeks. 

I guess that's all for now! I hope to check in a little more regularly now that I have an end-date at work. Side note: Will's MacBook died, which I used for blogging, so I am working off my even older MacBook from law school and I have no way to download photos off my Nikon, which is one big reason I've been putting off blogging. I still need to figure that out, but I guess it will just have to be crappy, unedited cell phone photos uploaded on the Blogger app for now. All about my interesting technical difficulties. I NEED to share some of the funny/weird stuff that William has been doing and saying because what else is blogging for? Anyway. Tata for now! But I will be back soon! Pinky swear.