Work day with mommy

I had the pleasure of taking Abigail with me to work today. I am on a flex schedule with my job and only had to work 3.5 hours on Fridays. I love the option of a flex schedule, as long as you work your 37.5 hours they let you do it in different ways. I absolutely don’t get anything done on days that she goes in with me, so I prepped Monday’s court stuff yesterday and actually brought home stuff and worked a couple of hours when she fell asleep last night. Abby loves to go to my office; she is a child who is happy as long as someone is in the room with her. I think that daycare has done this to her, which I am glad that she loves people. I can pass her off to a stranger and she will just look at them and smile. This might be a problem when she’s older, because she isn’t allowed to date until she is 27 – and if she bats those beautiful eye lashes I know that the boys are going to come running. At my office she has so many “honorary Auntie’s”. We don’t throw around that term very loosely though, these women just love her for who she is. I feel honored that so many people at my work and church love on her and treat her like family. Jason and I often talk about how we wish that our family lived closer, however circumstances and jobs brought us to this area away from our family. Jason’s side of the family lives about an hour away from us, and my side of the family lives about 4 hours away. Abigail has only made one trip to Tennessee to see my side of the family at Christmas, we need to plan another trip once there isn’t any more threat of snow, hopefully that will be soon! Today at work there was a group of us that went to PJ Chang’s. One of my favorite restaurants, however I think it is a little pricy for Chinese food. Abigail slept when we first got there, however woke up to play before our food came. She got to get some water out of my straw and eat some Sweet Potato bites. She played “drop my toy” with Brooke and lounged back in her high chair like she owned the place. It was a time to celebrate a worker leaving our office. I think time at our office is sometimes looked to as a “sentence” that needs to be served. A lot of people work there for two years and then leave, due to a contact they sign to assist with their school tuition. I have been there almost seven years. I think it is crazy how long I have worked there, but someone has got to do it, and I have a passion for working with children that are abused and neglected. I fortunately got out of front line work though about three years ago and working as the liaison with the court systems. I couldn’t have worked ongoing front line anymore either, it is a high burnout job. However I have realized that many people who leave our agency end up coming back in several years. I think that any job in social work is high stress in some form or another. We need to pray for our workers daily, for strength and encouragement. Our job can be very discouraging with the long hours, and the bureaucracy of state government. So we said good bye to one of our workers today who will be moving on to greener pastures. I know that we will keep in touch too, if for no other reason she will want to see Abigail. Love you Kim!