Well, the long awaited (and much dreaded) day has come and gone. It went much more smoothly than I had imagined (of course, I was imagining the worst), yet I'm still very glad that it's over.

Scott and I dropped Caleb off at nursery at 8:30 this morning. The drop off went smoothly and we slipped out while he was playing with a toy so that he did not see us leave. We then headed to our respective jobs - the low point of my day. Returning to my office was weird. I hadn't worked in 7.5 months, but in many ways it seemed like I had never left. When I was climbing up the stairs, it felt like any other day when I was headed to work.

I arrived at my office to discover that my managers just wanted me to "take it easy" upon my return. They had decided that it was not best to overwhelm me from the start. While I appreciated this, I would have liked to have had SOMETHING to do. When I asked my manager if she could at least give me a file for one of the cases I would be getting so that I could read through it, she laughed and appeared to think it was a bizarre request. I, on the other hand, really just wanted to be busy all day so that the day would pass quickly. Instead I spent the whole day with no direction at all. So, I talked to everybody in the office, caught up on my former cases, weeded through all of my 300+ e-mails, updated all my expired forms, and talked to everybody some more. In the midst of my crazy, busy day, I only phoned the nursery once to check on Caleb (though to be fair, I phoned Scott and asked him to phone a second time and to call me right back).

Caleb did great on his first day back and we got nothing but positive feedback about how he was doing. I even managed to survive, with the day passing much more quickly than I had anticipated. My wonderful husband surprised me during his lunch break with flowers - he had just enough time to get to my office, give me flowers, meet my officemates (he had never before been to my office), and then turn around to return to his office before his lunch break ended.

After work, Scott and I met at the train station and picked Caleb up together. It was definitely my favourite part of the day! Our cute little boy greeted us with giant smiles and then showered me with lots of kisses.

While I hated being apart from my baby, I was reminded that even though I have dreaded my return, I really do love my job. And I learned that I might get a new case working with a woman who has Dissociative Identity Disorder and has over 20 personalities, all with different names and ages! I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about this possibility because it sounds absolutely fascinating. So, while I would rather be at home with Caleb, at least I have some things to look forward to.

Labels: Caleb, Cheryl, Work