Hello bloggers!

It's my first day back at work at The Bakersfield Californian. So far I've cleaned four months of dust off of my desk, thrown away the dead plant, and now I'm waiting for thousands of e-mails to load so I can delete them all and start from scratch.

Maternity leave was a roller coaster — good thing I love roller coasters! In the beginning, being a stay-at-home-mom for the first time was exhausting and frustrating. I had planned all this stuff I was going to do while I was at home. But guess what? The baby needed me! So I quickly decided to give up the to-do list and just focus on being a mother. That's when it became fun. My favorite activities with my baby boy are playing with him, reading to him, giving him a bath, and rocking him to sleep. I love kissing and tickling him to make him laugh and smile. Being a mom is the most fun job in the world.

But now I'm back to the job that pays the bills. Luckily my mom is staying with us for a while to watch the baby. Otherwise I might not be having such an "easy" time of leaving him during the day. I will be going home for lunch to see him in two hours.

It's good to be back, though. It was nice to have a reason to shower, dress nicely, do my hair, put on makeup and leave the house this morning. And of course it's wonderful to see all my co-workers at The Bakersfield Californian and have actual adult conversations with them. And I look forward to the work I'll be doing here, encouraging all of you to post articles, photos and videos to Bakersfield.com and looking for golden submissions to print in the newspaper. So keep me busy everyone!