6 months/27 weeks and back-to-school

Yesterday, I guess, was 6 months, and today is 27 weeks in this pregnancy.  It still doesn't seem all that real, honestly.  I'm not sure I'm ready, although I still have three months to prepare.

In the meantime, a lot is happening.  My kids are starting kindergarten in just over 3 weeks.  We're flying home from a vacation in Hawaii in a few hours, and we'll be home for a week before we leave for Yosemite for 4 days.  After that, we only have a week and a half before school starts.  To say I'm excited is an understatement.  I've been reading articles and blog posts about the sadness of sending your kids off to school for the first time, and I don't really feel that.  I definitely felt it when I sent them to preschool, but I suspect I'm over it now.  I loved school as a kid, and I'm very excited for my kids to experience it, too.  They're going to a fantastic public school, about a half mile from our house, and I believe it's going to be a great experience for the whole family.

As I've mentioned before, they're also doing AYSO, swimming, and violin lessons, although I just discovered that all this will overlap for, at most, 8 weeks.  Swimming ends 2 weeks before soccer ends, and while I might choose to continue it, soccer will be over until spring, so during the later fall, it would just be swimming and violin.  So we'll see.  Swimming in late fall is actually for the real team, rather than just the little-kid version we've been doing, so it would be a bigger commitment in terms of practice time, there's additional volunteer time for parents (i.e. me), and I'm not even sure my kids will qualify.  And with the new baby coming and the holidays, too, it might be a good time for a break.  We'll just play it by ear.

I'm working on getting an au pair.  I've been interviewing people, which has helped me discover that I wouldn't be a good manager.  I feel bad for all the people I won't end up hiring.  I almost feel lucky that I had such a bad experience with the mother's helper I hired when the twins were born, because it keeps reminding me that I really need someone who is an excellent fit for our family.  I interviewed one guy, who I really like and was sweet and energetic and seemed like he'd be good with kids.  But I'm nervous about trying to breastfeed a newborn with a guy around, who I don't know well.  And I really want things to go well with breastfeeding this time around.  I'm nervous about having ANYONE around who is essentially a stranger while I'm trying to learn to breastfeed a newborn, actually.  Especially someone the age of an au pair - will they be staring at me?  I guess they'll get over it quickly, and they come from a country that is much less averse to nursing and toplessness in general.  Maybe I worry too much?  Well, I KNOW I worry too much.

At this point, I doubt we'd have an au pair in place before the baby comes, so possibly it wouldn't matter about breastfeeding a newborn - we might have either gotten breastfeeding established or given up by then.

Anyway.  Life goes on.  Sometimes rather quickly!  It's 4:30 in the morning in Hawaii, and we have to leave around 8 to catch our flight, and I can't sleep because I forgot to take my sleeping pills.  But it's probably a good thing, since my own local time is 7:30, and I shouldn't have too much trouble adjusting to the time change.  We had a great vacation - we snorkeled, swam with sea turtles, saw volcanoes, hiked several times, body surfed, ate tons of good food, and played in some awesome swimming pools.  Now I'm ready to go home and start getting our family ready for the end of summer and the start of school.