Welcome back...

I've made it no secret that blogging can sometimes become sort of a chore for me when I feel pressure to write instead of wanting to do it. Fortunately, I don't have deadlines and advertisers to please, so this has never been anything but an outlet I sometimes share with other people.  

I started this blog a long time ago before I was a parent, with the only intention of getting things off my chest without the pressure of censoring myself in conversation with someone else.  No opinions interrupting my thoughts, no social awkwardness clouding what I really think and feel. Just me. Writing, for me. It's a release of pent up thoughts and ideas with no where to go, which often simmer in my brain until I can't sleep at night and eventually cause me to start going a little crazy.  I found out a long time ago that writing them down, even if never to share them, even if only to delete them immediately after expressing them, through the tips of my fingers, relieves my mind of the heavy weight.

In September, my work load doubled. My stress tripled. The company I worked for was in the process of being transfered to a new owner.  So the work for my one client, the one that has kept me happily at home with my Pie, was coming to an abrupt end. Not only was the work doubled, but it was harder. I was trying to do a lot at once, very quickly and most of which I had never done before.  All the while, losing my mind about what was coming next.

I've always told myself (and too many others because I am addicted to giving advice), "if you don't make a choice of what changes to make, life does it for you."  And it did. Now that I had reached the end of that temporary rope, the one I knew was coming for longer than I admitted to myself, I had to choose.  What was I going to do now?  And the options were too endless to narrow down, too overwhelming to simplify, and starting to weigh very heavily on my mind.

I'll try to catch up what's been going on with some background over the next few entries. Feel free to skip ahead to the Lilli entries. She really is the star of this show, something she is quickly learning how to use to her advantage.

I missed this blog. More than I can really express. It's my baby book, it's my diary, it's my life in too many words no one needed to read but me, but they did. And I missed reading your blogs. I missed talking about our blogs.  I missed seeing an opportunity to write about something important to me fly by and time slip through my fingers.  I missed six months of stories with matching photos, advice on the tough things other people had some insight into, and six months of growth and change.  Most of all, I missed having somewhere to put it all down.