Brrrr.....

I've never been a fan of cold weather. Growing up in New England, of course, I didn't suffer from lack of exposure. I think the 5-day backpacking trip in New Hampshire in February with Cirrus (a very cool outdoors club at my high school) helped solidify my friendships with many people who are still important in our lives, and also directly led to my decision to head to Southern California for college and my current view that even DC is too darn cold a few months of the year. Don't get me wrong-- I love snow and am glad there was plenty around during our time up north during the holidays. I like a few weeks in the year of winter, and then am totally done. I'm at that latter stage now, an unfortunate thing given that it's just mid-January here (and yes, I know, not *that* cold). This explains why I booked our tickets to visit Charlie, Lea and Wes next month-- booking tickets to Florida makes me feel temporarily warmer.
It's an exciting weekend here in DC-- here in our cozy Adams Morgan apartment (the advantage of our reduced income and therefore small one bedroom is that it doesn't feel as cold as an actual house), it feels a bit like the calm before the storm. Sean and I are cuddled up with him in the sling, as is the norm when I post, for a long winter's nap, while his (insane, in my opinion) father is choosing to go for a run in our balmy 23' weather. As I like to mention to folks when I am feeling lazy, breastfeeding burns about 500 extra calories per day and that is all the exercise I'm getting when it's this cold. We get out most days-- 30' is my cutoff for Sean and I-- but not in this weather. I figure Sean and I have actually logged about 150 miles since he was born, almost all with him in the Ergo on my front. We like to stroll around the city and he's a great companion... he gives me the excuse to be talkative if I feel like it, and also is fine when I'm quiet and enjoying the nature or architecture, depending on our route.
As always, I'm not quite clear how much time I have to write, but a few highlights of our time recently:
- Sean continues to grow and thrive. We haven't weighed him for two weeks but I'm guessing he's about 17 lbs at this point (meaning: he's long outgrown his 0-3 month clothes). His legs, as Kate pointed out yesterday, look like sausages and he's not short on the chubby cheeks or chin(s) checklists. He and Chris are doing well their days at home together, though Sean tends not to nap much those days and gets a bit overtired and fussy. In contrast, as demonstrated by his current 2+ hour nap, he loves to sleep when I'm home. I tend to wear him more and it could be the feeling of being close, the varied movements (I bounce away on an exercise ball at our desk while editing action alerts for work, or blogging away), or something about feeding "from the source" might make him sleepier. At any rate, we are so lucky we have such a smiley, happy, active baby that provides endless hours of entertainment and rarely, rarely cries.
- He's sleeping more at night too, which is great. We usually get a 4-6 hour chunk at the start of the evening, and then are up every 2-3 hours with him after that. We don't always get to bed to get all of that first block of sleep, of course, but I'm feeling more well-rested every week. The lack of sleep compared to a year ago, though, made it tougher to kick the cold I acquired about two weeks ago, but I'm on the mend now, almost back to normal.
- My lack of a cold, though, means that Sean is being subjected again to my singing. He might be wishing I lost my voice again. :)
- I'm struggling to find a routine of being both part-time at work and part-time at home, without feeling too inadequate in either area. Given that I typically logged 55-60 hours per week at my job for most of the past few years, cutting my time down to 32 hours per week (and 20-25 in the office) is a huge change. I feel frantic when I'm there, but that could be in part because it's just the first few weeks back, and things are very busy here in DC on the issues I work on. That's a good thing, but it keeps me on my toes. Plus, I have to factor in pumping every 2-3 hours while booked pretty solidly with meetings; luckily, many of my meetings are via conference call so the pumping itself works well, but racing back and forth to the kitchen to wash my supplies and put milk in storage is something that's tough to do when I'm booked back-to-back. Oh well... I'd conditioned some of my coworkers by already running late for meetings!
- We are very excited about this Inauguration Weekend!!!! We plan to walk down to tomorrow's concert and Tuesday's speech/ceremony and then the parade, but will bail if it's just too cold or crazy. It's nice to be about 2-2.5 miles away from everything and be able to comfortably carry him, since we can better control our coming and going. Look for us in the very back of the crowds, beaming. What an exciting few months it has been!
We continue to upload videos and pictures, like this one from today, though not quite at the frequency we used to. I promise we'll take many on Tuesday, though, to capture the historic events here in Washington. Until then, stay warm everyone!!!!