Firsts

Greetings All. It definitely has been some time since I last wrote. So I’ll just blab for a bit. The last few weeks have flown by. Speaking of flying….Alexander rode on his first flight. Flying with a baby is stressful under any circumstance. I can say he wasn’t the worst baby on the flight, but not the best either. He was overtired and cranky and he finally fell asleep as we descended into Chicago on the first leg. I think that leg was the worst all the way around. We flew to Pittsburgh to visit my sister and her family. Alexander got to finally meet his Uncle Scott and cousins Ben and Cami for the first time. It was great to get everyone all together…and together, as a family, everyone got the flu, too. Fortunately Steve and I got to at least go out with Scott and Staci to downtown Pittsburgh for a nice dinner and to see a bit of the city. Scott’s folks watched the kids which was real nice as well. Somehow I managed to stay flu free, still knocking on wood for that one. Flying home with a sick baby and a sick husband wasn’t all that stellar. But there is a lovely humor in it all. Staci felt just awful about the whole thing and is worried we’ll never come back. Don’t worry sista, we’ll be back.

The day after we flew back I went right to work. Alexander was supposed to go to daycare for the first time, but he was running a fever and couldn’t go. So, thankfully Grandma Cindy came to the rescue and stayed over a couple of nights to help with the baby. I’m back to work full time now…and what happens the second day I’m at work? Grandma Cindy gets to officially find Alexander’s first tooth! I checked the night before, no tooth. So, just add that to the list of firsts I missed. Seems to me Alexander likes to share his firsts with his grandparents, I’m ok with that though, it’s precious actually. Now if I can get in on maybe his first crawl or walk that would be great, but I’m not counting on it.

I worked an eight day stint my first week back. It hasn’t been an easy adjustment for me, but I’m working on it. This season at work has all the makings of being very stressful. The park is celebrating 150 years since the Homestead Act was signed by President Lincoln and there is a lot of events planned. One being that the actual Homestead Act is going to be at the park for a month, under armed guard and available to view. Literally thousands of school kids are booked for programs on top of everyone else coming out to see it. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the document in full. I’m going to need to develop some stress relief tools so I don’t bring my work day baggage home with me. It’s not healthy to do that and I’m very prone to doing that unfortunately.

Alexander did finally start his daycare. The first morning I dropped him off he looked a bit terrified. But, when I picked him up he was happy as a lark. The second day I dropped him off he was all about it. When I picked him up he could care less that I was there, he wanted Miss April! I’m lucky we found her. So, that alleviated a chunk of stress on whether or not he’d adapt well to new surroundings. Turns out our boy may not be the scare-d-cat we thought he could potentially be. Maybe he’ll be an outgoing kid, we can only hope!

Well, I’m surprised I got this much written in such a short amount of time. I can hear Alexander fussing upstairs. We had ourselves quite a day today. He was my shopping buddy, we went to three supercenters and had a lunch date on top of that with virtually no meltdown. There isn’t enough hours in the day to get all that I wanted to get done on my days off. I picked up all the fixings for homemade graham crackers and homemade goldfish, not going to get them made tonight though. But I did get Alexander’s baby food made for the next couple days – parsnips with carrots and apple sauce. Yep, I make his baby food. I’m pretty proud of myself for doing it. He likes it too amazingly. He’s a good boy and we’re so lucky.