Mark this down in the baby book.

Noah didn't cry when I dropped him off at Ms. D's this morning! He gave her a big hug when I handed him off, he thought about fussing (for all of about 5 seconds) when I said goodbye, and he watched me walk away without so much as a peep. I could hear them playing before I walked out the door.

Happy Leap Day!

A DJ on the radio last night was asking listeners to call in and answer: "How often do we have a leap year?" Derrr...

The prize: a $25 gift certificate to Brake Check. Not even enough for a crappy brake job, if you happened to need one.

Hmmm... I don't know which was more lame, the question or the prize.

Teeth!

Who would have ever thought that identifying new teeth could be so challenging?!? With the help of an extra set of pediatrician hands and a nifty tongue depressor, I'm 99% sure I saw more than one. How many? I couldn't tell you. Don't even think about asking me to post a photograph of his pearly whites!

Ooops!

Note to Prius owners: When the car says "Add Fuel," do it. When the car says, "no really, add fuel now, dummy (exclamation point)" it's no longer about whether or not you can make it to the gas station before the car stalls. Apparently, even if you make it to the gas station in time and fill up the car, it still might decide not to turn back on until it has an appointment with the Toyota Doctor. As we found out on Sunday.

the "no, really" lights

It seems like everyone wants to know the question, "what happens when a hybrid runs out of gas?" so I wasn't surprised to find several personal anecdotes on the internet. Some tell tales that you can run the car on battery power and coast into the gas station on fumes, but this doesn't seem to be the norm. I read somewhere that this is a safety feature, designed to keep you from destroying the car by running it into the ground on the electric engine/battery alone. I also read that if you manage to keep the car running and fill the tank, then reboot, the warning lights should go away after 50 miles. Or just don't let it get that low. Especially not on a Sunday afternoon.

Tooth?

...with an emphasis on the question mark. Wednesday evening last week I noticed a "hole" (for lack of a better word) on Noah's lower right gum. Not in the center, where I might expect a tooth to pop through, but off near the canine area. It wasn't red and it wasn't white, and it didn't look remotely toothy. The "hole" closed up a little and became less noticeable over the weekend, but if you run a finger over his gum, you can feel the little serrations of toothiness. As of today, I still can't see anything white, his gum just looks different.

And we wonder why he's fussy at daycare. No, seriously, we've been taking this all into consideration all along.

We have a tooth!

?

The Best Medicine

It seems that Monday went well at Ms. D's. She reported that she heard Noah laugh, which can only be a sign that things are getting better. We're still keeping our fingers crossed and accepting any thoughts and prayers you can muster! At least I can tell she wants it to work out as much as we do. Plus, I don't think that she'll be able to let him go now that she's had a taste of his laughter... go watch that video again if you're not convinced!

We'll deal.

Dave and I have had some good conversations this weekend about the Noah/daycare mini-crisis. We feel optimistic about things getting better with Ms. D, and we feel good about our backup plan. We just can't tell Noah about the backup, or he's likely to bomb next week on purpose!

So much for that post...

I've waited all day to post the daycare verdict of the week. Things had been getting steadily better and better at Ms. D's, and I was excited to share the great news. He went from mostly fussy, to playing independently as long as the older kids were napping, to playing with the big kids here and there, to napping (granted, in the swing) and taking a bottle... I was feeling so good that I wanted to post mid-day, but I was afraid to jinx anything by celebrating before the day was done. So sure that we were ending the week on a great note, I had butterflies in my stomach as I drove to pick Noah up this afternoon. And then the schtuff hit the fan. It seems Ms. D had the worst day imaginable, bad enough to taint all the progress Noah had made on Wednesday and Thursday. The verdict of the week took a nose-dive: if things don't get a lot better really soon, she's not going to be able to keep him. I was totally caught off-guard! WHA?!? I'm sure he did have a miserably fussy afternoon (I've seen those before) and I have to say I understand where she's coming from. It's stressful to listen to him cry and not be able to fix it, it's a pain in the neck (and back and shoulders) to hold him nonstop, and it's not fair to the other kids in her care.

But the real question is: what next? What if this really doesn't work out? I had such a good feeling about it, it's hard to accept that my intuition might have been flat-out wrong. And, above all, it's heartbreaking to think about how hard this all is on sweet Noah.

Gettin' our Groove on.

(No, no, not that!)
Call it a conflict of instincts, but my parenting philosophy holds two very different things near and dear. One, I subscribe to the infant-led, attachment parenting school of thought, in which (up until some age) babies' needs and their wants go hand-in-hand, and fulfilling these needs leads to a secure and happy baby that is better able to focus on the important things like growing and learning. Two, I think babies (and people in general) thrive in a structured environment, on some semblance of a schedule, where they know what they can expect here and there.

So one of the most surprising things to me, as a new parent, is how seemingly impossible it is to find our groove. I often feel like every day of Noah's life has brought new surprises and challenges. When every day holds something new, how are we ever supposed to find order and routine in our lives?

Recently it seems like every day's "new" thing provides yet another excuse why we can't get Noah to nap in his crib, or nap period.

Jellybean

I couldn't figure out why Dave kept calling Noah "Jellybean" last night, until I overheard him explaining to the little one that PoPo (Dave's mom) used to tell him he looked "slick as a jellybean" when he got his hair cut as a kid. Here's a pic of our slick little jellybean with his new 'do, during and after:



I was a little afraid that his first haircut would make me sad, but the new look is growing on me quickly. He's just so darn cute!