Look What I Can Do!

Owen goes to day care a baby and comes home a multi-talented, super-duper cool kid. Look at him sitting up, all on his own! We are impressed. He is also learning to lift his butt off the ground, and is primed for crawling. And he spins 90 degrees. And eats. And earnestly watches the cats. And and and... I get the feeling that if he hung out at home all the time, he wouldn't be advancing so quickly. But with seven other little friends to watch all day, Owen is learning how to be independent. Hooray!

Illness

Are you that surprised that the next entry after "Owen Starts Daycare" is about the illness now infecting our house? Yeah, we're not that surprised, either.

Despite having troubles eating due to his stuffed nose, Owen has been a champ through his cold. If Owen was cranky and whiny and crying constantly, this would be harder than it is. He stayed home from daycare for two days, but he's back again and they haven't called us to say, "Please come pick him up now."

I have not been as lucky, staying home from school for three days and having a generally hard time studying the intricacies of Article 1 courts with my head full of snot. The hardest part of having a sick baby is that sick babies are up all night... and being sick myself, I'm not getting enough sleep to fight this cold. So there you have it.

And luckily for Owen and I, Dave is not sick. Unlucky for him is that he has to take care of us.

Day Care

Owen started part-time day care last Wednesday - and so far, he's enjoying it. He attends just in the mornings. 7 other babies, from newborn to 12 months, are in the Wee Bears room, and he has two teachers: Tara and Lindsay. His friend Myah is also in the class. Every day the teachers send home a progress report - how much he ate, at what time he took a nap, etc. They even include some more interesting information, such as, "Owen enjoyed sitting in the shade of the trees and being outside today." We've decided to keep the reports so that Owen can see them when he's older and track his own development. Because truthfully, these reports are more thorough than we can ever be with his baby book.

When we began looking for daycare, we were surprised to find that many daycare programs in this area only accepted new kids at the beginning of the school year. As a result, we enrolled Owen in part-time care even though Dave is home full-time until January 2009. But this way, Owen will be socialized with other kids, and he'll be eased into part-time care so that when he has to attend full-time in January, it won't be such a shock.

Owen's First Meal

Last Sunday Dave whipped up some rice cereal, and I have posted the short video taken during Owen's first meal. (Ingredients: rice and milk. Then pulverize to reduce the kernels.) As you can see, Owen took to the meal immediately, and then afterward I fed him regular milk to wash it down. Those rice pieces can get stuck in the throat.

Yesterday we moved from rice cereal to bananas. (Ingredients: bananas. Smush with a fork and feed.) Owen seems to prefer the bananas to the rice, but we don't have any photos of that yet. And yesterday and today I also shared my yogurt with Owen, who is quite pleased to be included in all this food sharing. We thought he was ready to start solids, but we weren't expecting him to be so participatory just yet. Today we attended a friend's birthday party (Happy 1st Birthday, Jacob!) and Owen eyed the sandwiches with great interest. Too bad he has a ways to go before we share those - some teeth would probably be helpful.

Back to School/Work

Today was my first day back at school/work. I did pretty well - I only cried twice. It was definitely the longest time I'd been away from Owen, and even though he was with Dave all day, I worried and fretted and felt a bit lost wandering the halls of the SU Law School.

The Office of Student Life has provided me with a private room where I can pump milk during the day, so Owen will continue to be breast fed from afar.

When I came home this afternoon, everyone was exhausted from our first day apart, so the whole family took a group nap on the bed. It felt great.

Those People

Owen Prepares for Travel

During our recent airplane travels, we dreaded becoming "those people" - the people with the screaming baby. On our way out west, Owen slept through the whole event, and we were relieved. Two rows in front of us, some other travelers with two small kids were "those people," and their children screamed for hours aboard our 5 hour flight. We scoffed at them, clicking our tongues.

As they say, payback is hell. Our flight from Portland to Charlotte, NC went smoothly, and Owen made lots of friends along the way. He smiled sweetly at the twenty-something fellow sitting next to us, and batted his eyelashes at the flight attendants. But then he decided to cry for the first thirty minutes of the flight from Charlotte to Syracuse. We knew exactly what Owen wanted - someone to stand up and rock him to sleep. But we weren't allowed to stand up because the "Fasten Seatbelt" sign was lit, and no matter what else we did, he cried and sobbed and giant tears rolled down his face. We apologized to our seat mate and the flight attendants, and eventually the sign was turned off and Dave rocked Owen to sleep in the small area around the lavatories. It was stressful. But I also learned that at some point, you stop worrying about being "those people" and just worry about making the baby as comfortable as possible.

Owen Enjoys a Cucumber

We are introducing fruits and vegetables to Owen - including cucumbers, as you can see in the above photo. Owen doesn't actually eat anything, just tastes it. But next week we begin some solid foods, which I'm sure will present a number of great photo opportunities for us.

We are in Oregon for the week, and Owen is relishing all the attention from our West Coast family. Except maybe from Dudley the dog, who thinks Owen's feet are just delicious.