Aug

Well, for the next week, I am “Mr. Mom.” Leslie is off to a professional conference in California to present some of her work, and in many ways, truly launch her career. It is a great opportunity for her, since she will meet and become known to not only some of the most important people working in her area, but also a number of her peers. Many of these peers (including Leslie!) will go on to become the future leaders in the field. So, it really is a big deal.

I went to a similar conference toward the end of my grad school education, and it still is one of the most memorable single events I took part in. I made a lot of useful contacts, and became friendly with a number of folk with whom I now interact in a variety of capacities. I hope that Leslie has a similar experience.

The trip itself though, is very rough for her. She feels very guilty about “abandoning” her baby, and is also worried that she’ll be gone so long that Sami won’t remember or like her when she comes home next week (after being gone for 8 days). Also, Sami is now taking some formula to stretch out the milk supply that Leslie left for us, which also bothers Leslie alot. It is a tough situation for Leslie to be in, but I am trying to assure her that all will be fine — and I am really sure that it will!

In the meantime, things here are going very well. Sami is liking her daycare now, and she clearly is a favorite — *all* of the teachers know and like her, not only the ones in her room — she is such a sunny, cute, sweetie, it is easy to understand why! She even has a boyfriend, although she isn’t wild about the idea. A boy in her room, Christopher, is a little bit older and mobile, and he is continually going up to Sami, trying to play with her. Sami isn’t interested, so often she just pushes him away, and makes him cry! I can see that we are going to have a real heart-breaker on our hands!

The really big news though, is that Sami is taking to solid food quite well. For breakfast hese days she has cereal — she loves oatmeal and likes barley, but thinks that the rice is truly boring! For other meals, she loves sweet potatoes and peas, and does OK with carrots. Tomorrow we introduce green beans (I can’t contain the excitement!), and once they are established, I am going to introduce bananas as a nice little dessert. It is fun to watch her take to her food. She *really* gets to know the stuff is eating — she likes to squish it in her hands, and although she doesn’t quite know how to do it, she really likes to take a spoon and try to feed herself. Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether she is eating or wearing more of any given meal!

Beyond this, Sami is doing OK with just me around (Leslie left yesterday morning). I am pretty sure that she misses her mommy, since she is insisting on being held a bit more than usual, and when she gets tired and disintigrates she does it with a little more force than usual — however, she is doing fine — sleeping well, eating *really* well (she had a cold for the past two weeks, and although it didn’t seem to suppress her appetite, now that it is fading fast, she is eating *much* more than she used to!). I guess she must be must be having a growth spurt.

OK, Sami is down for a while, and I am starting to get hungry, so I think I’ll go rustle up some dinner …

  

Aug

It’s just so quiet. That’s the worst part about this daycare thing. Somehow, when she’s gone it is *so much* more quiet than it is even when she is here but sleeping. I miss her a lot…

We’re just beginning our third week of daycare. The first day was awful, worse even than I imagined it would be. She cried! Craig and I both went together those first few days, and the first morning when she got there and went to the head teacher for her room (Miss Emma), she started crying. We had taken her by to meet Miss Emma and play with her for a few minutes a couple of times before, precisely to try to avoid her being scared on her first day. But we had been on vacation the previous week, so it wasn’t fresh in her mind, I guess. Honestly, if Craig hadn’t been there, I would’ve just said forget the whole thing and taken her home. That’s probably why he went! %-)

Anyway, despite the fact that I felt like someone was ripping my heart out, we left. I had started crying when she did, and pretty much cried off and on the whole time she was there. But once we got home I would go into the bathroom to cry, so Craig wouldn’t see. He thinks crying is a sign of weakness. He missed her, too, though – I could tell. We both just kind of moped around until we decided to go pick her up.

We didn’t leave her there long on that first day, and when we got back she wasn’t crying, but you could tell she had been. He thinks crying is a sign of weakness. They get little “Daily Report” sheets, which list the activities they do, when they ate and got changed, and how they were feeling. It says “I was: cheerful, enthusiastic, happy, talkative, content, tired, fussy, clingy, sad, not myself at all” (the teacher circles whichever ones apply). The only thing circled on hers was “sad”. It was so awful. Beyond awful, actually. Miss Emma assured us that the first day was always hard, and that the next day she would be fine. I wasn’t so sure…

The second day she didn’t cry when we dropped her off; she just looked kind of resigned to the whole thing. In some ways that was worse! At the end of that day, Miss Emma said that the first two or three days were always hard, and that by the end of the week she would be fine…

The third day she actually smiled at Miss Emma when we dropped her off. I was practically weak with relief. Miss Emma said she still didn’t really like the other kids trying to play with her (there are two babies in her room who are older than her, and can crawl; they would try to crawl up and play with her, but she didn’t have much interest), but she wasn’t fussy at all with the teachers. And you know, Miss Emma was right – by the end of the week she *was* fine; on Friday, they circled that she was “happy”.

Okay, Craig’s done giving her her bath now, and it’s story time. More later…