Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Where Does the Time Go?

So I thought that being on maternity leave would mean tons of free time to work on all the projects I've been pushing off due to lack of free time (like this blog for example!). Surprisingly (at least to me), even though I'm not working there still seems to be little time in the day to get anything done other than just try to keep up. Part of the reason is that I'm just so tired all the time. Little N isn't really on a schedule yet, but he's not a terrible sleeper either. I'd say he wakes up about 3-4x per night or about every 2-3 hours. Considering he is exclusively breastfed and on the small side, I'd say that's about on target. Husband keeps telling me that he'd be more than happy to give him a bottle at night so I can get some sleep, but I remember from my previous babies that choosing to supplement was the 1st step in the slow slide towards losing my milk supply. I've got my pump, but I need to get a couple of parts from Babies R Us before I can actually use it. I keep meaning to make it over there, but it is still so hard to run any errands with N. I'm not shy to bf in public, but that doesn't mean I want to run all over town stopping every two hours in the most awkward places for a 30min feed! Plus something always seems to come up that derails whatever plans we have laid out for the day. Today, for example, we were all set to go into the city to apply for N's dip passport and visa. Unfortunately as I went through the 30-odd page comprehensive pregnancy cable I figured out that I had left out a step and still had one more document that I needed to get from my assignment technician before we can make our application. But when I went to log into the State Dept intranet in order to send her an email I realized that my password had expired so I was unable to log in using my FOB from home. So then we had to make an emergency trip to FSI so I could try to log in from there. Of course even with the new password reset function that was rolled out a few months ago, I'm still unable to reset my password here because my account is hosted out of Manila, so only they can reset my password (never mind that it is a 12 hour difference). Therefore I have to wait until tonight to try calling Manila IT to see if I can get it reset (god forbid they can't do it over the phone). This detour only took about 30-40 minutes, but it means that I won't even be able to email my assignment tech until tomorrow, which means I won't get this form until at least the following day except that, whoops, like the biggest snow storm even is about to hit DC on Wed night, so there probably won't be any work on Thursday or Friday, so she likely won't even be able to get to it until sometime next week, then I can actually go apply for N's passport and visa, and did I mention that I need those in order for N to be able to travel back to post with me?* Ugh! This PCS/Medevac has just been one moment like this after another. Like we still haven't gotten paid for any of or vouchers yet! We did manage to get Husband's orders, but I can't figure out if/when our household goods left post yet since I can't log into my intranet account to check with GSO (which means I'm still living in maternity clothes just in case anyone was wondering).

Okay, enough with that. Here's some of the good stuff:




*which means that I'll keep writing the world's longest run on sentences out of sheer bureaucratic frustration!

4 comments:

Michael Podolny said...

When I read all your stories like this, I am content that I made the career choice I did those many years ago.

Bernice said...

But he is worth it all!! How cute.

adventures and misadventures abroad said...

At least you have time to post pictures etc here and on facebook so we can keep up with how fast N is growing! How much longer does C have to be on crutches?

alexis said...

He is a cutie and hopefully between the craziness that takes away a bit of frustration of the bureaucracy.