One good week together

I'm not gonna cry, I'm not gonna cry. OK, that's out of the way. Tyler & I had a great week together. We had lunch with Travis on Monday. We've been able to meet him for lunch several times while I have been on leave. So we had to fit one more lunch in before D-Day. As usual, Tyler slept through lunch. It's a miracle, really. It seems that whenever we take him into a restaurant now (which isn't often), he sleeps right through the meal (which is nice). There are a few exceptions, but all in all he behaves.

On Tuesday, Tyler & I went over to the daycare. I wanted to meet with the director again and ask some questions and make sure that I had all of the paperwork that I needed to get him started on Monday. We hadn't been over there since November, so it was a good idea to get back over there and get reacquainted with everyone and everything. As I expected, I burst into tears the second that I walked in the door. I felt like a fool - I wasn't even there to drop him off!!!! But they reminded me that I wasn't the first parent to have that reaction, and I most certainly wasn't going to be the last. We took him into the infant room where he met the instructors. One of the girls, Renee, picked him up and played with him and talked to him. At first, he seemed a bit wary but warmed up very quickly. He even started to flirt a bit with a little girl in a crib nearby. Not even there and he's already causing trouble! I felt a little better after I left. Again, we are very happy with the decision that we made to go with this daycare and we have no concerns about it. We know that he will be in very capable hands and that he will undoubtedly handle this transition better than Travis or I. But it's still hard. I have spent the last 10 and a half weeks with my little boy and 9 months before that.....I'm not ready to give him up.

Moving on, Tyler had his professional portraits done on Wednesday at JC Penney. We never got any real smiles out of the session, but the pictures came out great anyway. I'm really pleased with them and can't wait to get them back. This is the outfit that he wore in some of the pictures. He looks like such a BIG BOY!!!!! Go figure...he smiled for me at home, in his carseat. What a professional-looking background - haha! But it was a special day for the pictures to be taken - it was his "10 week birthday". Wow, has it really been 10 weeks already???? I say it all the time, but time really does fly.

After the portraits, we had lunch again with Lori & Evan again. We put the boys in the pack-n-play again and watched them interact. I just kept watching them thinking how much that they had changed in just a few short weeks. Before we know it, Tyler & Evan are going to be tearing through our houses together. It all goes by so fast.

Other than our excursions, we've been working on sleeping at night around here. Tyler used to go to bed when we went to bed. It worked for all of us, and we didn't really notice any issues. But as he got a little older, I noticed that he seemed to be tired more often and he was fighting Travis at night to go to sleep. At the recommendation of our pediatrician, I started reading Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Though we aren't following the practices in the book very strictly, we have taken a few things from it and have seen a wonderful difference. We start Tyler's bedtime routine sometime between 6:00 and 7:00 each night (depending on his mood). Travis gives him a bath (which he now LOVES), gets him dressed for bed, then gives him a bottle of expressed milk. Yes folks, I just said BOTTLE. Tyler must have known that I was bad-mouthing him to people about his bottle-taking abilities because last Monday was the first time in over 2 weeks that he took a bottle with NO complaints! It was as if he had never stopped taking a bottle! We still aren't sure what caused the "bottle strike" around here, but all we do know is that it seems to be over....and boy are we happy!!! Anyway, after the bottle, it's off to dreamland for our little one. He usually falls right asleep (though as I write this, he is upstairs with Travis fighting sleep tonight....go figure) and will usually sleep until anywhere from 1:00 to 3:00, when he wakes to eat. Then it's back to sleep until 5:00 or 6:00. So we are really proud of him, and are expecting that he will start sleeping longer at night within the next few weeks. At that time, we will transition him into his room (you know, that nursery that we worked so hard on before he was born???) and his crib. We're hoping to have that accomplished within the next month.

So Tyler & Mommy's last week together was a success - and a fun one. I'm really going to miss being at home full time with my baby boy, but I know that he will be just fine at daycare. As if I didn't already do so, I will learn to cherish every waking moment that I have with him. And Travis will be there to help us all adjust to our new routine.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there!!!! I can't wait to spend my first Mother's Day with my 2 favorite men in the world.