We're still here.

Wow, that was a long time between posts, wasn't it?

I'm not exactly sure I can get everything of the last month down, but it's been not too bad.

We went home for the holidays, after I recovered from the pinkeye. Which, yay me, no one else in the house got. Then, almost immediately after arriving at my parents' place, both Hubby and I came down with severe gastroenteritis. Yay Christmas dinner. Not. Baby N. didn't catch it, though, and his Grammie had a good time taking care of him while I lay on the sofa trying not to die, or to puke on anything. Good times.

The drive back (and the drive up, for that matter) were both fairly uneventful. We managed to avoid all the major storms that popped up, and we took our time, stopping overnight on both trips. On the trip back, the only hotel we could find didn't have cribs, though, and that was interesting. We made N. a little pallet on the floor, but somehow he seemed to realize we were leaving him on the FLOOR, thank you very much, and screamed bloody murder. I ended up doing something I never thought I would, and co-slept. It was quite amazing how swiftly he would calm down once in the bed with me, and I know now that this wields amazing power. I'll be keeping it in my back pocket, and using it only for good and not evil.

Daycare re-transitioning went fairly smoothly; only a few days were miserable and now he's all, "Ok, Mom, you can go. I'm playing here." There's another baby who's 4 weeks older than he is, and playing with her seems to encourage him to take new developmental steps. She started crawling, 2 weeks later he did. Now she's standing up, and I think he'll be there soon.

He also seems to be showing signs of either a severe nursing strike, or perhaps weaning, but I'm not going to talk about it until I really know what it is. *Sigh*.

Gee, that was rambly. And I have to get back to my experiments, so I'm not fixing it, dammit.

So there.

;-)

He goes to daycare but I get the pinkeye.

(I had a long post started about N.'s first week in daycare, but we're halfway through week three, and things are going well, so I might just let it disappear rather than reworking it)

Well, it's been an interesting weekend around here... I don't have too much time to blog, but suffice it to say everyone is right when they say to expect babies to bring home every little bug once they start daycare.

N. is doing fine, except for one little pukey episode yesterday, which seemed to resolve itself very quickly. I, on the other hand, look like a zombie out of 28 Days Later. I woke up Saturday morning with a raging case of pinkeye, and between my normal pharmacy being closed on Sunday, and the stupid WAGs being out of stock, AND finding out my prescription could not be taken by nursing moms, I've finally got medication that should work. Plus, no one else in the house is showing symptoms as of yet (fingers crossed).

The problem is that the ointment renders me temporarily blind, and I need to use it at least 3 times a day. So, I've got font sizes bumped up on my screen, and am reading very fuzzy text at the moment.

Blech. I really hope it clears up soon. N.'s first Christmas photos shouldn't include a Mommy that could scare little children and give them nightmares for months.

The kindness of strangers...

... and a long-winded story on the way to it.

In the mornings, the university shuttle has a route that loops through our neighborhood, and we have two chances to hop on. On the upswing (on the :10's), you have your pick of seats, but if you miss it, you can catch it on the downswing (on the :20's) on the other side of the street.

With N. in tow, I like to catch the 8:10AM bus on the upswing. It means I can sit in the front seat, which has tonnes of footroom for me to put my laptop bag, and N.'s stuff, without having to take up two seats. Yesterday, though, she was early (like, 8:05AM), and I had to flag her down when I was in the middle of the block, but it's no big deal (she's super).

Today, I got myself on the road early, so as not to miss her, but it ended up raining as soon as I left the apartment. I stopped to wait under the eaves of our little grocery store, and tried as best I could to keep N. from getting too wet. I figured I could flag her down again, and stay dry as long as possible, or maybe even catch the 8:00AM on the downswing.

Just as I got underneath, this woman came up to me and said, "Do you need an umbrella?" I smiled, and said, "Oh, no, that's OK. I have to wait for the bus anyway. But thank you!" She then proceeded to press the umbrella in my hands, already opened up for me, and insisted, "I have another one in the car, and I actually have a car. Please, take it."

I tried to protest again, but she just smiled and said, "Go ahead, you need it." I nearly started to cry, and I could only thank her and wish her Happy Holidays.

Then, I managed to catch the 8:00AM, who was running late, on the other side of the road, not having to wait much at all.

I have trouble sometimes with the people in this city. The ones that you think would be polite, courteous, and common sensical (i.e. the intelligentsia that surround me most of the time) are rude and ignorant. I can't count the number of times while pregnant when the profs and researchers here would literally shove me out of the way to get on the bus, or to get in line ahead of me at the cafeteria. More recently, they blow past me on the sidewalk, walking three abreast, forcing me into the mud with the baby.

Once in a while, though, my faith is restored by seemingly little things - the teenage boys who go out of their way to hold open the door for me when I have N. with me in the stroller. Last fall, the woman who cleans the tables in the caf saw me with a nosebleed one day, and brought me a container of crushed ice and some J-cloths to help stop the bleeding. I hadn't even seen her walk by me that morning before she placed it on the table in front of me. To this day, when she sees me she asks about N., and I don't even know her name.

And, then, the smallest gesture of all - one morning an elderly gentleman, hunched over but tall with pride, stepped to the side to allow me to pass onto a narrow footbridge downtown, and removed his hat and swept into a deep bow.

It makes me think it'll all be ok.

The hardest day of my life

Well, today was N.'s first day at daycare, and I guess you could say we both survived.

Without going into too many heartwrenching details, let's say he didn't take too kindly to me leaving. Combine that with having to be held and fed and changed by three strangers (who I LOVE, I have to say), and he was pretty angry with me by the time he got over being desperately upset.

He hasn't cried like that since he was two weeks old, and it broke my heart every time. But the teachers were great, they were so supportive of me, and with two visits for some nursing time, we made it through the day. He even gave a few smiles here and there when he forgot how pissed he was supposed to be ;-)

I just hate the fact that I have to do it all again tomorrow.

The latest development.

This isn't something that I've mentioned here yet, but since it just became a pretty prominent part of our existence, I figured it was time.

Yesterday, N. got a DOC Band. He has mild/moderate plagiocephaly, which is pretty common, although it seems with him that it's not completely positional (ie, not totally caused by lying on his back in the same position). The bottom like is that there's a clinic in the next town over (there are only a few across the country), and that it's paid for by our insurance, so we decided to go for it. He hasn't been improving much, even with lots of tummytime, so it seemed like the thing to do.

He's getting along quite well so far, even though it's only the first day. He cried for about a minute when they first put it on, but forgot about it almost immediately. He even slept until 7AM this morning!

I was really apprehensive, especially about going out in public, but we bit the bullet yesterday and went for groceries right after the clinic. A really nice man came up to us out of nowhere and said, "My son just got his band off last week - you're going to be so happy that you made this decision!! It's SO worth it!" It made me feel so much better.

Huzzah! And, Woo-hoo!

Deposit is down, we're into daycare as of December 1st!

(weird that I can be so thrilled about that, and at the same time be so upset. shall post more later about my "ohmygodicantbelieveimabandoningmychild" issues)

For those of you that are the praying kind...

... regardless of your deity, throw a couple our way.

The daycare debacle, which has been raging on in the background, is showing some signs of turning around.

We've been entertaining the idea of places that require a car ride away, and working on some sort of solution to that car ride that doesn't involve actually buying a vehicle, and most of them have been coming up dead ends.

Today, though, Hubby decided to email our first choice (across the street from lab), just to remind them we were still here, and see if there was a chance we could get in before, say, 2010.

A spot just opened up. In N.'s age group. And the director emailed about it, saying she was just about to call us and see if we were still interested.

It's not a done deal yet, so we're still keeping fingers and toes crossed, but hopefully we'll have an answer by the end of the week.

Since I've gone back to work, we've been trying so hard to make sure both Hubby and I get our hours in, without sacrificing too much of our family time, and it's not easy. Even when he's productive with his computer/paperwork on the days he's home, Hubby still feels like he should work the weekends too, and I feel horrible that I want him to stay home. We haven't reached the point where we're like two ships passing in the night, but it's close sometimes.

And, as much as I hate the idea of not spending so much time with N., I realize that daycare means we can spend more time together as a family. Plus, it'll be good for him to socialize with babies closer to his own age.

Can this actually be working out? Please send good thoughts.