I may be one of the few people looking forward to the end of the summer. Besides the fact that fall is my favorite season, I’m excited about getting back into some programs that weren’t available during the summer: strollercise, Mommy Movies, etc. Plus, Justin will be six months old in September, which means he’ll be old enough to do things like swimming lessons. I might even join a curling team this winter. All good.

Of course, the fact that Justin is almost six months old means I’m almost halfway through my maternity leave, and that seems weird. (The girl who’s covering my leave at work is actually pregnant herself, which is even weirder.) I guess I’ll have to start looking into day cares one of these days. Justin currently doesn’t care who looks after him, but that may change.

The little guy slept in about 45 minutes this morning, so our routine is a bit off. I thought maybe with the extra sleep he would skip his first nap (he normally has four naps a day) but no. I guess we all have days like that. There’s no way I’ll complain about a baby who likes to sleep!

It was a jam-packed week, but the last assignment is done and now I can relax. The main thing I’ve learned this week is that book editors spend very little time editing books. One of the instructors said she does most of her actual editing on evenings and weekends, cause during the day she’s always meeting with authors, talking to sales reps, negotiating with agents and working on the kind of marketing material that drove me insane this week. That hardly sounds like an ideal lifestyle.

The good news is that I proved myself to be a good editor (”magnificent” is the word my instructor used, just to toot my own horn), which is a big boost to my ego. Would I want to become a book editor? Hard to say. I love the editing, but the business aspect takes up more of the job than I think I’d like. Food for thought…

Am I allowed to admit I’m often bored stiff being at home with my son? I know a lot of moms would love to be this bored (Justin is so easy to look after that I end up with a lot of time on my hands) but I swear, some days I feel like my brain is about to leak out my ear. It’s way better than it was when he was a newborn and couldn’t really do anything — at least now he grins and laughs and plays, and that is every bit as rewarding as they say. But I’m getting tired of always doing the same old things: going for walks, going to the library, going shopping, doing some yard work.

Besides just literally running out of things to do, I’m also feeling a great need to be mentally engaged in something. I read books and work on my scrapbook once in a while, but it would be nice to have more. I guess it’s a good thing that workshop in Vancouver is coming up soon.

Three months ago, when I was exhausted and sore and having so much trouble breastfeeding, I actually resented Justin every time he got hungry. I couldn’t wait to pass him off to someone else and I just felt trapped. I’d been warned that bonding with the baby could take a while, and it did, but we’re there now. I leave for Vancouver in two weeks and I just can’t imagine being without that cuddly little body for six whole days. Even though I know he’ll be fine in the care of his dad and his grandpa, there’s always that nagging thought at the back of my mind that no one can really take care of him as well as I can.

Speaking of whom…Justin got lots of bonding time with his Kingwell grandparents while they were visiting over the past 10 days. My parents always say they wish they lived closer to us, but if they were here in town they’d never get the 24-7 kind of time with their grandson that they do when they come to visit. There’s always a tradeoff, I guess.

I haven’t written in a while cause there hasn’t been much to say. We’re into a nice routine with Justin that seems to work for everyone. He threw a hissy fit at his grandparents’ place Sunday night for no real reason that we could discern, but he was fine the instant we put him in his car seat to go home. Maybe that’s all he wanted, who knows. Chris and I have noticed that whatever fussing Justin does during the day, he never ever does it at night. Between about 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., he’s always happy as a clam. He sleeps all night and just talks to himself in his crib in the morning. I don’t know how we got blessed with such a good baby, but I love it.

With one brother in Whitehorse and the other in Saskatoon, it’s not often that the three of us get together. So it was great that both Rob and Dave came to Kelowna for the Victoria Day weekend. They met their nephew (who was his usual happy self), plus we played a couple rounds of golf, one game of tennis and lots of cards. Justin is so portable right now that we could go out almost anywhere, so long as we had the diaper bag and a bottle for him. I say it again: Chris and I can’t ever have another baby, cause I wouldn’t know how to deal with a kid who wasn’t a perfect angel.

I’m still waiting to hear if I’ve been accepted into the book editing course I applied for in Vancouver, but part of me is hoping I don’t get in just so that I don’t have to decide whether to leave Justin for a week. The course would be interesting, but it’s pretty expensive, and I just don’t know if I can leave my baby for that long. We’ll see…