March 5th, 2006 by Liss
Abby rolled over today - in both directions - for the first time unassisted. I can’t even believe that we’re at that point, but there was no mistaking it. She rolled over from her belly to her back three times and then went the other way, just for good measure. I guess all that tummy time has paid off!
March 2nd, 2006 by Liss
One of the things that you learn when you become a parent is to expect the unexpected. Somehow, though, no matter how well you think you’re doing that, the unexpected still crops up where you least expect it. In this case, I find myself suddenly - and very unexpectedly - unemployed. Okay, it’s not “sudden”, exactly, since I haven’t actually been working since before the baby was born in November, but it is unexpected.
I was supposed to go back to work full time this week - yesterday, to be exact - but we haven’t been able to get Abby into any of the day care situations that didn’t make me cry just thinking about it. We’ve been on the wait list for a number of places for a long time, but good day care slots in this area are not just crazy expensive, but also ridiculously hard to find.
What I suggested to my bosses was that they start passing me work that I can do from home - not the project management that needs someone in the office all day every day, but things that I can do while Abby’s napping or in the evening after J. gets home. That would let me start getting back into the flow mentally, and it would take some of the workload off of the rest of the team until I could get the day care situation sorted out.
They wanted to talk about the options in person, so I went in to the office this morning, thinking we’d iron out the specifics and see if we could set a target to get back to full time. Turns out, though, that the real agenda was to let me know that they don’t actually want me back full time at all. Ouch.
They don’t have a problem with me, they were careful to say, but I’m more than they can handle full time right now. While they desperately need project managers (and are looking to hire more than one, I understand), they’re apparently looking for underpaid project managers, because they can’t afford me and don’t want to ask me to take a pay cut. Or so the story goes. I don’t actually know how much more I am (uh, was) making than the other project managers there, but I do know that I was making a good bit less than colleagues at other companies. Make of that what you will, I guess. Either they want (and/or need) to pay far less than market rate or they just don’t want me there.
On the bright side, they did promise to send me what work they can on a contract basis and to refer projects to me that are less than what they want to deal with. They say they want to keep me around and hopefully keep me as busy as I want to be at home, and that’s great if it pans out, but the reality is that I expected - and budgeted - to go back to work full time. Sure, I’d love to make enough money in naptime and evenings to avoid going the day care route at all, but I’ll believe it miracle when I see it, and (even more to the point) when my bank account sees it. Our budget definitely does not call for me staying home with Abby, no matter how much we might like that. I need to be able to sleep at night without nightmares of watching our savings go down the drain. Suddenly instead of going back to the job I expected to have waiting for me, I find myself looking at hitting the job market when I least expected it and least wanted to. Cue the nightmares.