Empathy

I am seriously in love with the daily "report cards" from Thomas's daycare. They tell us what he ate, when he slept, what he did, what he liked - so much information on one little half-sheet of paper. But no matter how much I treasure the written word, sometimes there's nothing like a conversation - like today when Miss Tally (Thomas's favourite daycare provider) handed me the report card and then said, "OH, I totally forgot to write down that Thomas has begun showing empathy."

I have to admit I was puzzled. "He has?" I mean, sure when he was a baby he cried when he heard other babies crying, but lately most of his interactions with other toddlers involves bashing them in the head with trucks.

"Oh yes," reassured Miss Tally, "It's so sweet. If one of the other kids is crying he goes over to them and hugs them, and sometimes we find him patting one of them to sleep."

My boy?! I am bursting with pride. I can't believe he's old enough to show empathy!

Shoe fetish?

A few weeks ago concerned staff at Thomas's daycare mentioned to us that Thomas was holding on to his shoes while he napped and suggested that perhaps he needed a lovey. We promptly sent in a small blue teddy bear. Thomas hadn't really chosen a special toy, but Blue Bear seemed to fit the bill for naptime: soft, cuddly, huggable.

Today Blue Bear came home. Why? Apparently Thomas prefers to sleep with his shoes. He eats his lunch, says, "All done. Sleep." and walks over to his cot where he waits patiently for someone to take off his shoes. He lays down, says "Shoe, shoe," then cuddles the shoes to his chest and goes to sleep.

They say they've never seen anything quite like it before. Leave it to Thomas.

At least they're cute shoes.

Daycare

So Thomas has been in daycare full time for a week now and he appears to be doing extremely well. (André and I aren't doing too badly, either, though I had to find ways to prevent myself from picking him up early nearly every day.) By Thursday of this week Thomas left our house without crying & today was a banner day because he got dropped off without crying. Yippee!

Getting dropped off with no tears is especially important because André is the primary drop-off parent. My school starts at 8:05 and is 30+ minutes away, so André & T do the drop-off every morning. Poor André has had to survive the sight of his son screaming & twisting to get back to him day after day... but since I do the pick-up, André doesn't see Thomas playing contentedly & happily at the end of the day. Let's just say that we are all happy that Thomas isn't crying so much any more.

And speaking of being happy, I must now admit my secret: I already love many of the things I mocked about this particular daycare before we began. For example, they have a webcam so we can go on-line and see what our children are doing anytime during the day (except when they're outside). I mocked this mercilessly - "What? We can't survive 5 minutes without knowing what our precious children are doing?" I love it. Seriously. It's jerky & there's no sound & I check it regularly. I can't explain it except to say that I just like seeing him. He's cute & I miss him & there it is.

I also mocked the "report cards" we get. Yes, it's all true. We get daily report cards that tell us about food & diaper changes & naps &, mostly importantly, what our child did during the day. This is clearly ridiculous. I mean, the food and naps makes sense, but the narrative? Honestly, they can barely talk. But it's so darn cute I can't stand it. I've saved the entire first week's worth. I smile when I think about his teacher writing things like "Thomas appeared to be drawn to cooperative play," (Ha! That was a generous interpretation.) or "He played with every ball we have" (Now that sounds like my boy.) or, best of all, Friday's report card which said, "Thomas had an amazing day!"

And yes, I am completely aware that I just made you all read quotes from T's report cards at age 14 months (he's 15 months on Monday, ladies & gentlemen). I am going to be insufferable. Wait, I already am insufferable. But seriously, he's so cute you just have no idea...

I'll stop now. Keep your fingers crossed that next week goes well, too. For all that things are good, he still isn't napping well there, though supposedly that will come. And next week - on Tuesday - I abandon Thomas and André to their own devices for the mornings. I will be leaving the house just after T wakes up. We'll try to keep you updated on how that goes!

Ducks in a row

For a few weeks now Thomas has been creating projects for himself. It started when he began moving some very light plastic children's chairs from the deck to the kitchen to the playroom and then back again. He would do this two or three times before he got tired.

Next came the ducks. He has four rubber duckies (thanks Aunt Bridget) and one black pirate duck (Grandma Leslie thought she gave this to André a while ago) which he plays with in the bathtub at night. Now he wakes up in the morning, "chats" with me for a minute and then says "DUCK". We go into the bathroom where he gets the ducks from the tub - if I have been especially clever, I've lined the ducks up in a row on the side of the tub the night before & Thomas claps in delight. Then he takes the ducks, two by two, into his bedroom and throws them on the floor. Once they are all there, he takes them back to the bathroom. Sometimes, if the stars are properly aligned, he takes a duck or two into our bedroom and gives them to Daddy to wake him up.

Project three is the magnetic letters on the side of the fridge (there are about 10). Thomas has a strong need to remove these letters - no mean feat for little fingers - and carry them to his booster seat. He throws them in until he's sure that they're all off the fridge, then he carries on with his day.

Smaller projects include getting tennis balls into and out of a tennis ball can, putting rocks into an old egg carton, (thanks to Grandma Shirley for those two) and stacking old containers into one another (a Grandma Patti creation).

I'll see if I can get some project pictures to go along with the descriptions...

Sick

Yesterday Thomas was sick - really sick - for the first time. Well, he had a fever once before and we got nervous, but this time he was vomiting. Somehow I never thought of sicknesses when I thought of all the firsts we would go through.

The poor kid slept nearly 13 hours, so we should have known something was wrong, but when he threw up just a little right after he woke up, I thought it was a fluke. 2 crib sheets and 3 outfits later, we knew: Thomas was sick. At first, every time he threw up he'd look really startled - what just happened to me? - then, after a minute, he'd start to cry. And the poor kid was hungry, so he wanted to eat and drink, but he couldn't keep anything down.

He made it until 1:30 - André was home alone with him for an hour while I frantically kept a coffee date with a girlfriend - and then he fell asleep in my arms. After a 3 1/2 hour nap, Thomas woke up feeling much better & he's been fine ever since. In fact, I can hear him talking to himself upstairs now that he's finished his morning nap, so I should get going!

Oh, and welcome back to the blog: I'm off for the summer & have finished the graduate class I had to take, so for the next few days I'm going to be going back and finishing up some of the half-finished posts as well as starting to write new ones. Wish me luck!

Thomas's perfect day

In my imagination, today has been Thomas's perfect day. It's a rainy one (so far this summer has been the wettest here in 17 years, so it's often a rainy day!) so we met up with two of Thomas's friends - Parker and Eli (whose moms are Malia & Erin) - and went to an indoor baby "gym". It's a giant foam-covered play structure with a ball pit and slides and tubes. You can only imagine T's delight when he realized he could climb and run to his heart's delight. He was ecstatic.

We played there until the kids were exhausted & then headed home. When we pulled up to our house, another delight awaited: a digger! (Yes, the lead-pipe replacement project continues as they begin to repair our sidewalk.) The digger driver was the same man who's been coming since October and he was excited to see us, too: "I'm glad you're here!" he smiled. "I was afraid you might miss us."

But we didn't miss them and Thomas got to touch the shovel part of the backhoe. The whole crew was thrilled with his pure joy; they all took a break and watched him revel. If I can get it together, I'm going to send some of the pictures to the construction company: I'm not sure how often they are greeted with such enthusiasm!

Needless to say, Thomas is down for the count now - all that excitement has resulted in a good, long nap!

The Poop Surprise

by guest blogger Grandma Shirley:

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh ... when Thomas woke from his morning nap (short one) he did not want me to take him from his crib so I said ok and sat and talked with him for a bit ... then asked him again ... again it was a strong no ... so I said I'd come back in a few minutes and get him and I went down stairs ... he did not protest and I had the monitor on and he babbled ... I had opened the window and curtain (due to the yesterday still lingering smell of his big spit-up vomit) .... I chopped rhubarb and listened .... when he made a big squawking I went up and .... his diaper which was loaded with poop was on the floor ... and he and his bed was covered with poop ... face, arms, ... and the clean sheets and the blankets which were fresh off the line covered in poop ... i did NOT over react ... I said .... oh what a surprise ... I may have said that a few times ... and then ran the tub ... he loved his bath ... (he had had a shower early morning with André because of vomit) ... so ... poop everywhere but good news none on teddy bear or stuffed dog ...

we did make it to the playgroup but an hour late ... still had an hour of fun and he's now downed a bottle of milk and is down for the count ...

(My note: obviously we are not including pictures in this one!)