Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Progress Report

The boy is sick.

He caught the cold that both of us had, and has been very plugged up for the last 3 or 4 days. He's been real good, but he's kind of a mess when we wake him up in the morning. Bobbie Jo took him to the Doctor today. They confirmed that he had a "cold" and that we could count on 15-20 more of them in his first year of daycare. They weighed him, and he's just shy of 11 lbs.

He's sleeping really well, most nights he makes it 7 hours before he needs to be fed. After that 4 am'ish feeding, he sleeps until 8 or so. He's become very happy and even more interested in what's going on around him. His progress in some areas is astounding. I don't see him as a baby anymore, he's a little person. He makes noises that are obvious attempts at communication. He smiles at us when we wake him up. He's really ticklish. Up to now we would "play" with him for our benefit, it's obvious that now he enjoys it. He will smile at us, and watch us, but doesn't yet interact with us. He's not grabbing on to anything yet. We talk to him all of the time and while he may not be a fan of all of the awesome songs we make up for him, they sure make us happy -♫ "Whose feets are these? These are the bean's feets!"♫.

One thing is becoming very clear. Parents don't get many opportunities to do chores. We had Grandma Camille over on Sunday to "babysit" for him on Sunday so that we could get some things done. She sat in the driveway with him for 3 hours and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Bobbie Jo went to Meijer's to get groceries, and I vacuumed and did a lot of the little things that we had been neglecting. We could probably come up with the time for all of this stuff if we really wanted to, but it more fun to spend time with the kid. Family first.

Bobbie Jo goes back to work on May 12th (this coming Monday). I'll be taking the day off so that we can both drop him off in the morning. We're both pretty beat up about it, but Bobbie Jo is taking it really rough. While she is excited to get back to work, she has been caring for the little guy for the last 10 weeks, and it's going to be extremely difficult for her to turn that over to someone else. We're terrified to think of the milestones that we might miss, and the bond that will be created between Max and his daycare folks. I have no doubt that the time we spend (and have spent) with him as his parents far outweigh that, but it's still scary as hell. We'd love to have Bobbie Jo go back to work part time, but unfortunately it's not in the cards right now. It's definately something we'd like to work towards, but who knows if we'll ever be able to make it happen.

Next week is going to be a big week. A really big week. We'll make sure to let you know how it goes.