First day

Well, we made it through day #1 of our new schedule. Each of our first days went well, although both were pretty procedural. Sacha sat through a long meeting and I nearly drowned under a mountain of forms. I also got to watch two thrilling videos on workplace harassment and fire safety. Tomorrow, I have my first afternoon at the shelter. I think I'm shadowing people for the rest of the week before I really get started, about which I feel greatly relieved.

I think it's actually good that I'm going back to work now, because I'm too distracted by not wanting to leave the kids to be too anxious about how I'm actually going to do this job.

We also had pretty good first days on our own with the kids. I took them to the zoo this morning and we saw umpteen million animals. We went all over the place. Mateo loved seeing the tiger, the hippo, and the elephant in particular. He was very excited to see their rear ends. He was fascinated! He also really liked riding in the stroller with the seat reclined all the way flat. I had it that way briefly for Natalia and he just couldn't get enough of riding while lying down. He's a man who appreciates leisure :)

This afternoon, he gave Sacha a run for her money with a very long post-nap tantrum, but then settled down and they all went to the park and for a long walk around the neighborhood to look for fans and wind chimes.

After I got home, we celebrated surviving the day by going out for barbeque.

We had to laugh at how we just popped the kids in the car and went out to dinner. We thought back to when we took them out for our first family outing whenever that was, to a nearby park, and how stressed out we were by what we did or didn't need to put in the diaper bag. We had a big turning point when we realized all we really needed were two sizes of extra diapers. And tonight, we didn't think twice about just putting them in the car and going. So, that has to be progress!

Here's hoping tomorrow will go as well as today did.