updates from a working mother

Well, folks, here goes:  I am starting back to work full time on Monday.  I came to terms with the hardest decision I ever had to make, scrutinized the positive and negatives and well, here you have it.  Steve's cousin works at a hospital and the hospital offers childcare for their employees and employees' families.  We fall in the latter category.  George will be one of three babies in the infant room (sounds like something out of Brave New World).  It's clean.  It's as close to in-case-of-emergency as you can get.  And it is surprisingly cheerful.  Every single toddler in the building was delighted to meet George.  Steve's cousin means the world to me; she has been looking out for George since he was in the womb.  She was at the hospital when George was born.  So - she's not just oh, like some kind of cousin.  She's genuine family.  And her office is just a few steps away from the childcare center.  She has been known to pluck children from the center and sneak them into her office for lengths of time.  Now she gets a little family member!

Work remains...work.  But before I left on maternity, I was just a couple of months into a new position.  I have a lovely little office with a water view, a brand new library that I'm assistant managing, and patrons that are, for the most part, the modern-day Jeffersonian yeoman.  This means reference questions are actually...frequent and farm-like.  The featured editorial from Library Journal a few weeks back was about how difficult it is to get a librarian job; the forecast graying of the profession didn't really happen (between budget cuts and ancient librarians not retiring, a good job is hard to find).  It came down to this:  if I left my career, I wasn't sure I'd ever get back into it.  Honestly.  And I didn't want to have any regrets about quitting; and if going back to work is horrible and too much for George?  I can always quit down the line.