Updateration

"Oh, Mommy, you trickster you! This isn't my regular breast milk...it's got rice cereal in it!"

Dad and Graham together on cereal day #2

Graham and friend, pre-bath

We've had an eventful past week - a growth spurt to end all growth spurts (requiring formula follow-up after breastfeeds, waking up at 3 am again after weeks of sleeping through the night, and some serious crankitude), which led to calling the pediatrician and getting permission to start rice cereal, a visit from Joe's parents, and now today, sleepiness to end all sleepiness, which is allowing me to finally, finally update the blog.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I think are probably typical mom concerns. You know, I leave him at his activity gym while I fix lunch for myself, and when I finish eating, he's still happily kicking away. Do I interrupt and start interacting with him so I don't feel guilty about basically leaving him to his own devices, or do I do what I know I should and sit next to him but let him amuse himself, because that's an important skill? Do we need to bring him to more different places more often, even though he shuts down at first and it makes him crankier later on, because he needs to be more socially comfortable? Is that a rash around his mouth (worrying about an allergic reaction to the rice cereal), or just the baby acne? And so on. I don't think I am an over-worrier, per se, but we spent the first two months of his life analyzing every blip, boing, and beep of his monitors...every tiny fraction of an ounce of breastmilk he took...every noise he made every second we were around him. It's just hard to break myself of the habit.

Speaking of worrying, I put our names on waiting lists for daycare starting in January. How am I possibly going to be able to leave him with someone else for 40 hours a week? There's also practical concerns, in that he will still be more susceptible to RSV for the coming winter season as well. Can we responsibly put him in a daycare center, the bastion of cold and flu? And once you start looking at daycare in people's homes, it's terrifying how many have been reported for one infraction or another. I think the solution is for Joe to quit his job (hi honey! just kidding!) or for Dave and Evan (hi guys!) to start a Daddy Day Care. Or, maybe I can tele-commute for the rest of my third year rotations? No? Didn't think so.

p.s. I feel like I should give Joe his due credit for the bear that is hanging out with Graham in the last photo...that is Graham's first ever stuffed animal. Joe bought it the night he arrived back in Boston after driving through the night from Rochester. He wanted me to keep it with me all through my hospital stay so that it would smell like me, and then Graham would have something that smelled like his mom when he was in the NICU. And I did - I slept with the bear (as much as I could have slept that week), used him to prop up my belly in the uncomfortable bed, put him under my head so that I could read while not moving a fraction of an inch (for a few days, every time I moved, Graham would roll over on his cord and his heart would slow down, which alerted a giant team of nurses to come in and maneuver me and all my monitors around). So while we didn't end up putting the bear in his NICU bed, it absolutely is Graham's favorite. And I'd like to think that is all due to his amazing dad.