The past few weeks have been filled with events and most especially transitions for our family. I returned to work full-time on January 29th. (Mike’s been working more than full time for several months now.) This wrenching transition was made easier at first by having a professional nanny, Jillian, who took care of Evelyn right downstairs. Jillian trekked out by light rail & bicycle every weekday from the other side of town, and just did a wonderful job entertaining and occupying Evelyn. She relieved my anxieties no end – thank you so much!
I know that I have a good situation overall; since I work from home, I remain able to breastfeed Evelyn during the day and spend lunchtime with her, too. Nevertheless, I’ve found it rather challenging to hand over baby responsibilities to another person and try to re-focus my attention on work responsibilities. There are lots of issues at work right now with a very big project under the gun, so I’m trying to take it one day at a time and keep my priorities straight. It’s important more than ever before to achieve that elusive life/work balance!
On Friday, February 9th, we bid adieu to Jillian and welcomed our Au Pair, Anne-Sophie, who arrived from Paris, France via NYC. We’ve been having a great time together so far, as it’s really going as well as we could have hoped. Mike and I feel quite lucky to have such a smart, friendly, relaxed and well-mannered individual joining our family for this next year! She’s just settling in still, of course, and we especially need to help her find a peer group close to her age (she turns 19 next month). Meanwhile, I’m enjoying exercising my terribly rusty French, and even Mike’s no longer averse to learning un peu de français! She and Evelyn are getting used to each other, too, and I even wonder if Evelyn’s first words will be “ça va” or somesuch! 
We’ve had lots of social fun these past few weeks, too. We were delighted to have my old friend Jen, her husband Ariel and their 18-month-old son Meris over for a nice brunch. Meris was a bundle of energy – we think he literally picked up every single object in the house that wasn’t tied down! I really enjoyed talking with Jen about motherhood. She’s someone who’s always known she was going to have children, and I value her knowledge as well as her mellow attitude. We’ve also had some good times with our friends Mike & Carolyn, attending both their baby shower and Super Bowl Party/chili cook-off. (Mike’s chili tied for first place!) Carolyn is nine months pregnant & expecting a baby girl, and Evelyn got the chance to inaugurate their new crib with its first napping baby! And then our good friend Ali was in town, right at the same time Anne-Sophie arrived. We enjoyed a home-cooked dinner together on Friday, and then some nice girl shopping in downtown Portland the next day. Even our kitchen has transitioned recently! We were excited to have the tremendously 60’s-style hanging cupboard taken down and mounted on a wall. The room seems much larger and more inviting now, and Mike couldn’t be happier since this invasive cabinet was his #1 issue with the house.
We are also delighted to have received an heirloom walnut dining table from Mike’s mother Sara, which dates back to the days of her parents’ 1920’s wedding in Virginia. We certainly feel like we’ve stepped it up a notch…so watch out for more dinner parties chez McBacon! Goodness...we had one last night, actually, as our friend Anah brought over a delicious home-made spinach lasagna and salad for us all to enjoy (followed by some Texas limit poker wherein she didn't clean us out as much as usual although she continued her winning Carcassonne streak)!
Finally, I could write reams about Evelyn's advancement into her bonny fifth month of life. She has grown ever more alert and aware of her surroundings, and just this weekend she seems to have come out the other side of a rather fussifying mental growth spurt, sporting yet more abilities. Most charmingly, she's been enjoying chewing on her toes, and she graced us with that astonishing bout of laughter we shared in the last blog post. She's now enjoying peekaboo, family sing-along time, and toys more than ever before. At her four-month checkup, she weighed 13.5 lbs and was 25 inches long (50% and 75% percentile respectively) and Dr. Birk called her "developmentally perfect." Mike couldn't contain his glee when the doctor actually recommended we get an ExerSaucer.
Overall, we've been enjoying the range of new interactions we can have with Evelyn, even if it's not all smooth sailing. She is habitually waking once per night now (after weeks of sleeping all the way through) and we're still nervous about Evelyn's overall acceptance of the bottle. My upcoming work commute of a couple days in LA especially has us anxious about things that we wish could be simply taken for granted. Still, we are loving life as new parents, and almost every day brings a new sound, gesture, or expression that fills our hearts to bursting!
--Liz
