Do I have to go back to work?

The answer is no, but reasonably, it would be stupid not to. If I chose to not finish the year (take a "Child care leave" I'd not only forfeit the rest of my years pay, which is indeed reasonable, but I'd also be responsible for paying back my insurance premiums. I'm told that is in the neighborhood of 15K. That's a new car. It would just be stupid to do that.

So instead, I'm returning for the 16 weeks left to finish out the year. I cry every time I think about it. It isn't just that I don't want to work (hey, who really does?), the issue is being away from Charlotte. I just want to be with her and take care of her. Not slave away for ungrateful urchins all day and see my daughter for like three hours at night.

She is being slightly crabbier than usual and I suspect the three month growth spurt is the culprit. However, I need to keep an eye on her getting up in the middle of the night, which has happened for the past 7 days. She had gone to sleeping through the night most nights, but now I get a 1 or 2 am wakeup. I feed her, but it is possible she is just waking up and needs to go back to sleep. So we need to have Dave comfort her (because mom=food) and try just getting her back down. Even with the crabbiness she is really just a doll and I adore her.

Monday we went to visit my sister and her kids. We looked at baby books for Sophia and Sam and they pretty much look the same now. So even though I wonder what Charlotte will look like, she'll just look like herself, as she is now. Speaking of which, we took some pics that are super-duper cute. They show how well she holds herself up, the other one is just funny because she was hungry but I wanted to take a picture. Not a good idea- the baby is ALWAYS the boss!