It's 3am, I must be lonely...

But, I'm not! My little man screamed his lungs off. It took me a while to respond. Usually, I am up in a flash, but I estimate that it took me ten minutes to respond. This means I must be really tired. Today was a busy day with only one nap for mommy! Today was the first day I was away from JT. Mr. Soup granted me some alone time. He tries to act like it was out of love for me, but I think he wanted some JT snuggle time. I never thought about how much goes into a father bonding with his child. We moms are lucky because ours is almost automatic, but dads need lots of built in time especially if they go back to work immediately. Plus, I think it helped Mr. Soup to be more relaxed around JT because I wasn't there critiquing everything. So I was granted 3 hours of alone time. I did some mundane things like take the dogs to the vet and shop for groceries, but I also ate lunch without them. I also drove my old car for the first time in weeks. I felt so young and carefree. Driving that Jetta again took me back to the age of 22 when I first purchased it. It was my only major responsibilty (and not really because my parents made the payments while I was in grad school). Those 3 hours of no responsibility were nice and refreshing. I will take advantage of it while I can; however, I was more than ready to see my little boy when I got home. I kind of was glad that he was fussy while I was gone. He missed me too!
Mr. Soup and I discussed the whole grad school thing again. I'm so lucky that my husband not only supports my higher education goals, but encourages them. I am also lucky that he totally understood me wanting to wait until JT or any subsequent children that we may have was in school. I know I am going to live for nights, weekends, and summers with my family.
One thing he is encouraging me to do is work on my writing more. I wrote a series of low readability inference mysteries for my students years ago. He wants me to add more and revamp them. I also developed some drug prevention activities for Red Ribbon Week that I can add to if I want to make it more universal. I've also been writing training stuff for friends' businesses and I am going to help my friend write the curriculum for her self-help program. All of this stuff I've been doing for free for my district and friends, but a little late night research has shown me that there is money to be had in doing what I love. I plan to work on some of this stuff this summer, but really crackdown next summer. We have to pay for JT's daycare year-round (don't get me started), so I plan to take him there a few days a week next summer. During that time I can work on all this (in addition to lunch dates, pool time, and other mommy-alone time activities). Focusing on this is better than grad school right now. Grad school = time away from JT, money going out. Writing = minimal time away, some money possibly coming in, and creative release. Plus all this could be good for the research I may do as a grad student in 2020! So I feel pretty good about my decision. I can honestly say I am where I want to be in life. I have two great jobs, wonderful home, two awesome dogs, amazing husband and the world's best son! Did I mention that in 30 minutes that son will be 2 weeks old? Time sure does fly. In that time he lost weight and gained it, battled jaundice, learned to take the bippy from Daddy and put it in his mouth, learned to make Sam love him just as much as Maya does, roll to one side and be extra cute! God, I love you, little dude. Happy 2 week birthday!