Today is my first day back to work after paternity leave, although I'm working from home most of the time while Amy completes her recovery from the delivery. I'm finding it a little hard to get back into the swing of things after 3 weeks away, but there's a great deal to get done and not a lot of time to do it.

Being exhausted doesn't help either -- last night was another typical night, in which we tried to put Samantha to bed with us at around midnight, she started crying as soon as she was in the cradle, and I sat up with her rocking her and changing her and soothing her back to sleep from 12:30 am to about 3 am, when I finally got to go back to bed. She woke up again at 4:30 am (hungry); Amy took her that time, but between the noise and turning on the lights, I was wide awake as well. Then I woke up again around 7:30 because Ella (the dog) needed to go outside, and after that I never got back to sleep again. So I'm operating on, conservatively speaking, 3 or 4 hours of sleep every day. No wonder I don't feel capable of concentrating on anything.

On the bright side, I think Samantha smiled at me for the first time today, in between fits of crying. She really doesn't like being put down in a cradle or bassinet -- she much prefers being held by her parents. I suppose there will come a day when we'll look back fondly on this, and wish that she still wanted that much of our time and attention :-)