My son (actually my nephew but i adopted him at birth) is now a week old, so i've only got 935 more weeks to go. what a change (single father at 41) but man is it fun. sorry no real point to this but i've been up all night
In general, yes, although today my wife and I wanted to drop-kick our 9 year old son into the nearest large body of water. But, yes, in general it does get better.
he's starting to open his eyes more and interact a bit more. he actually slept most of the night last night, i got a big 4 hours sleep! yeah baby i understand the drowning impulse, my girl's 12 yr old lives with us and her mom is often threatening her with death. actually i think it gets better from 0-12 but then it goes a bit downhill with the teenage attitude
Ah man I love that first week or so! Congrats on both the new addition AND your positive attitude about it. ;-)
I am loving the new name my 18 month old has for me. Dadu. I am expecting a call from the Brazilian National team any day now. Rob keep us updated on Marco's progress.
I always liked the way the Portuguese "pai" sounded from little kids - but Dadu seems to me a nice "Portingles" combo. R&B, you're already incredibly optimistic: if my math is correct, you really think you'll be done when the lad turns 18! The line my wife and I like isn't violent, but certainly belies frustration at times: The baby buyer is coming and I don't need much money. Horrible, yes, but with enough humor that we still use it (privately to each other), long after the kids stopped being "babies."
Yeah the 18 is a bit of a joke much like your sale thing. My father would always scream at me you are getting the ******** out at 18. i actually left at 16 and ain't been back but then again my other 3 siblings, all over 30 now i think, still live at home i'm gonna be 59 when he turns 18 so he'll likely be taking care of me then lol dudes gonna have some kinda big head, he's already getting ink on washingtonpost.com from steinbergs DC Sports Bog From reader and Team Wiz equipment manager Rob Suller: Basically I'm trying to get a cheap plug in for my second child, first son, born on June 11th to my wife Amanda and Me: Jaden Espn Suller. Rob's idea was for me to explore unique names sports figures give to their children. I don't have any thoughts off the top of my head, except to note that a Barra Brava Elder recently had a son named Marco, which I can only assume was a tribute to Etcheverry and which is tremendous. But Rob Suller is a class act, and here's a plug for his second child, first son, Jaden Espn Suller. Although if I worked for Comcast SportsyNet, the official broadcast partner of the Washington Wizards, I think I'd be wondering why Jaden's middle name wasn't Csn.
Congratulations and good luck to you! BTW, are you going daycare or live-in nanny (you asked for advice about that in the other thread)? Love to hear your experiences with either.
decided to go daycare route for a few reasons--some of it was money but also the idea that if she was sick or quit or something i'd be up a creek. also my partner and i didn't want another person in the house, we've already got her kid, my kid and the two of us. my mother is here for 6 weeks until the dude can go to daycare, she watches him during the day while we work. thanks for the well wishes
Parenting is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. It will kick your ass, but there's no better job on the planet. There is nothing more humbling, frightening and glorious than to know that this little person relies on you for everything. And, despite the non-stop burden of it all, nothing more crushing than realizing, a few years hence, that they're needing you less and less, because they're growing up. Drinking helps, by the way.
Not to mention the constant activity and interaction with other people and children will do him loads of good. Ahmen!
Yeah, from T-Shirt Hell. I got that one for my kid for Father's Day this year, and the equivalent "Mommy Drinks Because I Cry" for Mother's Day.
damn, finding childcare is tougher than i thought. i might have to go back to the nanny idea. all of the licensed ones in my area are full and i've been trying to get through to the county referral line but i have been on hold for over an hour but need to get off the phone. this isn't good.
Yeah, you probably should have been on a waiting list many months ago. Decent daycare's hard to find, and pricey when you do. Also, a lot of places don't take newborns, and infant room spaces are the hardest of all to come by. I will say that I'm a big fan of good daycare; my two kids have thrived in daycare. My son was in an in-home daycare setting for maybe six months until a space opened in a center/ You might want to consider that, at least as a stop-gap measure.
Yeah, what Minnman said -- it's tough to find good day care. We had our little guy at home for about five months before we needed day care -- three months with my wife at home, and two months of daddy leave for me, and I was supposed to find day care during my time off. I had a place lined up at work, but then my company got bought by another company and they moved us to a different office and the day care place got shut down -- they transferred my name to the waiting list at a different place, but that wasn't going to happen in time. So I started making some calls with about a month to go, to find that there weren't many places that had infant openings. The in-home day cares that I checked did not look very appealing, and the big nursery school type places had long waiting lists. (in-home is defined as where someone runs a day care place out of their house -- most of the people who do this are not in the nicest parts of town, because the people who live in the nicest parts of town don't need the income from a child care business, so if you live in a nice part of town, it may be a bit of a shock when you go check these places out...) I got on some waiting lists and then found a day care place that would actually take infants when we needed them -- I went and looked at the place and I liked it, then my wife went to look at it and she hated it, but I convinced her not to quit her job and give these guys a try. And it's worked out really well, the teachers / providers are all wonderful and he is having a great time. But we got lucky that this place had an opening. So, recommendation: what Minnman said -- get your little guy's name on the list at the big places you like (and be prepared to pony up a nonrefundable deposit at each of them) and find an in-home place you can live with until a spot opens up at one of the big places. And maybe you'll like the in-home place well enough to keep him there. Does your county have a web site with the licensed day care places? Mine does, so I didn't have to call the number and wait like you are doing... Good luck!
at this point i'd settle for "ok" daycare . my county does have a website and i called all the places it gave me. now i'm trying the other service. i also called all the non-home places listed on another site and none of them were helpful. i guess i live in the "non nice" part of town since most places were a mile or two away. i'm not too concerned with cost, that's my one advantage i have some resources many first time parents (particularly those that start young) might not have. unfortunately i can't take much time off work so i'm gonna need to figure something out.
We kept our duaghter home with us for the first 6 months(4 months with mom and 2 months with me) We then went to 8 months with Grandma which was a 2 hour round trip commute 4 days a week We finally got into a great daycare which is now only a 30 minute to and from and it is as I said GREAT. Lots of activities and a very young but professional and energetic teacher group. Chloe has learned so much since we started fulltime daycare. Granted it has taken her a bit to adjust to her surroundings but she now looks forward to going everyday. It runs us about 250 a week, and it essentially means we both have virtually no money for extracurricular activities but it has helped us in so many other ways. (like preparing to eat only beans and rice when we have to send her to a private school because Baltimore Public Schools are complete shit ) After 2 years that cost drops significantly by nearl 100 bucks. We found that a free periodical called Baltimore's Child was very helpful in getting a solid list of places to check out. You may be able to find something comparable to this sort of periodical in DC.
Can't you get a nanny for now and put your kid on the waiting lists of the quality daycares around you?
that's an option. actually i found three daycares with space for my son and all are very good. i'm gonna pick one today and pay the fee
Great. Congratulations. That's one important box you can check off on what I'm sure is a very long list. I'll say, too, that when I lived in NC, my son ended up meeting kids in the infant room of his daycare that he was still close friends with up until we moved away six years later.