Happy Birthday to me

Whenever I write one of these I like to go back to the previous one and read about where we were last time I wrote. Two weeks can be a heck of a long time in baby-years. The biggest change since last time, in fact, has been a big one. Tyler is a day-care baby now. That's right. We got him through a good 5 months of being a home baby thanks to everyone's help with babysitting, but now it's time for him to start learning some other lessons, like how to interact with other babies and how to get sick rather a lot.

The place Tyler is going for school (It's just easier to start thinking of it like that now) is called Bright Horizons, and it's part of a nationwide chain of daycare centers. A few people we work with go there too. It seems really nice, so far. Tyler has gotten along with the new environment surprisingly well...well, not that surprising when you consider that it's Tyler, I guess. But his first day Jess was very much nervous and so we 'happened' to go out to get lunch and it 'happened' to be at a place really close to the day care. We stopped by to see him and he was having a pretty great time, just hanging out on the floor and playing with toys...stuffing them in his mouth, that sort of thing. He was really only mildly interested in us, really, and after we got ourselves some Tyler-cuddling time, we just put him right back down and he went back to playing. We're told he has had a couple of rough mornings so far, but I'm sure with experience, both from Tyler and from the day care staff, they'll learn his cues better and that will smooth out. But considering the abruptness of the change, Tyler seems like he's fitting in quite well.

There's seven other babies in Tyler's class and two teachers. The babies go up to a little over a year old, but after that they become toddlers and graduate up to the next class. There's a lot of cuties in there, but Tyler is, of course, the cutest. Donna is one of the oldest. She has a full head of hair but no teeth, and she likes people a lot. She came up and flirted with me on the first day. One of the days Tyler even took a nap over two hours long. He missed his morning nap, though, so that's to be expected, and he didn't seem to happy about that.

But yeah, so far things have been going great at the day care. Friday we didn't even have to go see him at lunch, and he's always happy and smiley when it's time to pick him up in the afternoon. Also, no sickness, yet, though I'm sure it's just a matter of time with so many babies around.

Solid food has also been going well. He's still mostly just on rice, which he really likes but it is occasionally to slow for a very hungry baby. Today, though, we got him some oats to try. They didn't taste much different than the rice (both like cardboard) but he had some to eat and didn't complain or anything. What a great baby.

Mom Preecs was here to take care of Tyler for his last two weeks at home, and the two of them got along just great. So great, in fact, that mom had plenty of time to cook us a lot of dinners for us and do a couple of sewing projects for Tyler. She made up one of those seven-can stools for him with some really neat fabric we got, and she even made Tyler a 'Gussy' to cuddle with. It's got a cute face and pockets and everything. Also, really nice fabric. I helped find that one, so that's my contribution.

Mom was also here to help my celebrate my birthday weekend! With Fish! We went out to a very fancy fish restaurant (Thanks, Jess!) called Trulucks (pronounced True-lucks, we finally figured out) and had all sorts of fancy ocean delicacies. Including rather a lot of dessert. Mom and I both tried the Tuna, which I hadn't tried in quite a while, and the crab cake which was fantastic. And dad managed to mail me some Dremmel tool stuff for use around the house, no doubt. I already know what my first project is with that. Thanks dad!

Jessie's birday present to me was that I got to go to whole foods and buy WHATEVER I WANTED. Which, let me tell you, is a heck of a lot of fun, though not cheap. So I put together a list of a few random things I wanted to cook, most of them from Alton Brown episodes, and picked up all the ingredients. I've made about half of my menu already:

1) Cheesy Italian Meatball Casserole – Frozen for future eating
2) Pastitsio Casserole – Lots of parts, but really fun to make. Also frozen already
3) Avocado Ice Cream – I'll let you know how it turns out.

The rest get made later today or tomorrow:

4) Fudge – Yum!
5) Grill Pizza – Double-yum. I'll make several types.
6) Stuffed Tilapia with cheese sauce. (Jess is letting me make fish for dinner!)

So that's what I do for fun on Birthdays. Way better than pub crawling. At least, for me.

Later today we're going down the street to the neighbors to hang out with Grant and get him used to strangers a little bit more. I also want to use the opportunity to see if Tyler likes playing in their jumper. His legs are getting stronger and stronger, though he still needs more practice sitting up on his own.

-N