Having your first baby is difficult. Well, not really difficult - but a learning experience. Every day there is a new "thing" to learn. And if you don't have anyone helping you learn, that makes it even harder. Some days it seemed as if I was just dropped into the middle of nowhere and told to find my way home, in the dark, without a flashlight.
One of the greatest things about having my kids at a daycare center, is that there is approximately 20 women there with the full-time job of taking care of children. They've taken care of hundreds of children, if not thousands. When I dropped Tyler off at daycare when he was 14 weeks old, I worried so much if they were going to be able to take care of him as good as I do. Heck - they had him figured out in days, and he was MY BABY and 14 weeks old and I still struggled to figure him out. Today, the same women that took care of Tyler are taking care of Connor. They know us, and boy do they know our kids!
As Tyler, and now Connor, are growing up, those ladies help so much in the transition from stage to stage. I remember the time they ever-so-politely asked me "would you mind if we started feeding Tyler some solid food?". "Solid Food?" I replied. "Really? At this age?" (I believe he was 7 months old). Their response was that he seemed ready for it. If no one would've "coached" me to that, I wouldn't have known. To me, he was still a baby. Don't you feed a baby bottles and baby food? Not forever, I learned. We started small, canned peas and pears, but they both figured that out quickly. There are literally hundreds of foods that can be eaten without teeth - from ravioli and spaghetti to cheese and bananas. Connor stopped baby food at 8 months because he insisted on doing it himself - definitely a personality trait of his that I still have yet to trace back to our genes (ha!).
Our next transition for Connor is out of bottles. By one year old, the formula can be gone, and the bottles get fewer and fewer. I've noticed a few days at daycare where he's only had one bottle. They don't offer it anymore unless he REALLY seems like he needs one. He's getting enough nutrition through the pot roast and potatoes he's eating (his lunch yesterday), so the bottle is just a comfort thing at this point. Transitioning out of the comfort thing is difficult, but those ladies help so well!
It seems to go so quickly, these graduations from stage to stage. I hardly remember Tyler drinking a bottle now, and barely remember him sitting in the high chair and eating. He sits at the table with us now, usually with a random truck around him that he pushes around while eating. And now, Connor is less and less interested in the bottles that I can give him, usually in the morning and at night. The night bottle he is totally uninterested now, and that was our last chance to cuddle. The last time I tried Thursday night to give him a bottle, he drank one sip, spit it out, and wanted down on the floor to play some more.
Everyone told me they would grow up so fast, but you never know what that means, until it's already gone. They are both growing up to be such neat kids, I can't wait to see what happens next!
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