New beginnings!

This month is a month of change for our family!

The restaurant where Yasushi is head chef is moving locations this month with their grand opening near the end of the month.
I have decided to cut my hours at my main job, going part time with a shift from 4am-9am, and taking on a second part time job.
Chinami is going to be a big sister in March!

Yes, everything is very exciting and tiring for all of us right now.

For me, though, it seemed like everything kind of fell into place at the right time, and is going to turn out perfectly. But first, a little backstory;

From around April of this year, the company I work at did a major rearrangement of the office in an effort to streamline things. As a full-time employee, I had an office job in addition to the early morning customer support job I had been doing. However, my assignment was changed from office work to additional customer service/dispatch work, done outside in a parking lot full of fumes. It felt to me like mindless busy work to "fill the hours" and a waste of my time and the company's time. There were lots of times when there were almost no customers around and the boredom was mind-numbing. I am a native speaker of English, and can speak, read, and write Japanese at JLPT1 level! There must be something better I could be doing with my time than telling people which bus goes to Waikiki (the one right in front of you, read the signs that are in Japanese!) Anyway, it got pretty old pretty fast and I was soon contemplating if I should go part-time like my part-time coworkers and finish at 9AM, and consider taking a second job that would suit me more.

Meanwhile, the doula who had helped me when I gave birth to Chinami was pregnant and gave birth to her baby boy in June. Her and her husband own a shop up in Manoa that sells baby items geared toward attachment/natural minded parenting such as cloth diapers, baby wraps/carriers, and herbal remedies. They also have a little cafe in the shop serving organic teas, healthy smoothies and sandwiches. They also opened up a bakery right near it with absolutely delicious goodies. I started going up to Manoa to enjoy the goodies when I could and reconnected with the lovely family.

And then in July, I found out that we would be having another baby! I would have liked to wait just a little longer to plan for another one but just like with Chinami, this one felt like now would be a good time, I guess. And perhaps it was. Having a baby meant that staying at my job full-time would be impossible. Not only would it be hard on the baby and breastfeeding, and Yasushi as well, but the cost of having two children in daycare at once, even on the part-time schedule I have Chinami on now, would be more than the salary I was earning. It would simply be impossible.

And then my friend asked me if I would like a job in her shop. She had been hiring for a while and had already gone through a few employees, and was looking for someone reliable. Obviously, it would be okay to work through pregnancy and come back as soon as I felt comfortable, and babywear while I worked. More than anything, I would be able to work in a field I have been passionate about since I found out I was pregnant with Chinami. I would be able to help new moms get the information and goods they needed to do their best for their babies. And I always loved jobs where I served food, because usually we had satisfied happy customers! So anyway, for a chance at this dream job, I immediately let my current managers know I would be going part-time due to my pregnancy and lifestyle changes.

This month, I started my part-time schedule from 4AM and have been coming home by 9:30 AM. And we finally worked out a schedule for my second job, working on Tuesdays and Thursdays all day. Chinami is also changing her schedule from three days per week to just two days until 5:30pm. This means that for two days per week, we won't get to spend that much time together, but for the rest of the week, we can still spend all day together. And even better, we can both spend more time with Yasushi on his days off.

There have been hardships, the first trimester of this pregnancy was a lot harder than the first time, with constant fatigue and morning sickness, through which I still was working 40 hours/week and taking care of Chinami. And because SAM-e has still not fully been tested, just to be safe I fully went off of it, which meant my C-PTSD has also been re-appearing. But as my belly grows a little bit bigger and with my wonderful new part-time job, things have been getting better and I feel like I am coming to the end of another tunnel.