Saturday, September 25, 2010

The Best Vacation Ever

Uh Hi there! Yea, yea I am still alive. And all is well around these parts.

This week I started back at work. Well sort of. After being on Maternity leave since April 12th, it was actually kinda nice to be back in the office, sitting at a desk, and catching up with co-workers. I wasn't really doing much work work, more busy work as most people didn't know I was there and I was mostly there to get adminy things accomplished, like updating passwords, getting access back to systems, setting up my laptop which died while I was on leave and submitting for a 5 week vacation.

Yea, that's right, 5 weeks. I have taken the disability and bonding leaves supported by the lovely state of California which paid out some monies for part of that time and protected my job, but now I'm back but have 6 weeks of time off accrued so I'm going to take some of that to tack onto the end of my leave to extend this precious time with my growing up way too fast baby girl.

I had been accruing vacation time and saving it for just this reason for years. Each time I'd hit the ceiling of how much they let us accrue, I'd be reminded that I didn't have a baby yet. But finally, I got to sit down and sign into the HR system thingy and submit my request for a whole lot of time off. It felt weird. It felt wrong. I thought, I could come back earlier and save more of this time. I'm stingy with my vacation time because it always costs money to go on vacation, money I didn't really have, and I always wanted to be able to have this chunk of time to take when I had a baby. And here I am. with a baby. so day by day I asked for 8 hours off. It was pretty much awesome.

We might go away for some of it. We might not. We might take day trips. We might just stay home and stare in awe at our little miracle and repeatedly say, "did you see what she just did?" as she learns and explores the world around her.

I'm very grateful I have had this time with her. I don't know if going back to the corporate world later will be easier or harder than if I went back after the 8 week disability leave, but I don't really want to think about that right now because today, right now, will never come again and I'm loving just being in love with my baby.

4 comments:

J said...

I'm SO glad you've been so careful with your time and so have been able to spend so much time home with your sweet girl. It's hard to go back, but it's a blessing to have so much time. I know I felt very fortunate to be able to spend as much time as I did with Maya before I went back to work. Of course, in PA, I had 3.5 days paid for, plus a week of vacation. Everything else was our money. Thanks to Ted's father, who left us enough that we were able to do that without stressing out.

Karen MEG said...

This is great, Cherry, so glad that you're able to have some more precious time with your baby girl.

I've been looking at my two lately, and marvelling at how big they've become, so quickly. They're still kids, of course, but the time passes by so quickly. I can't even believe that I was so lucky to have had the extended time at home with both of them. The precious baby years, wow, gone in a flash.

Enjoy your family time, however much you can get.

Issa said...

I think it's so awesome that you get to spend your time with her. YAY for that much time off too. I only had 8 weeks with each of my first two. I regret not just taking more.

You can't get it back, this time. It's mean like that. :)

Tracy said...

This is such an awesome post! Enjoy every minute of living in the present and being in love with your little miracle! She is precious, and they do grow up so fast, don't they?!

Love and miss you,
Tracy