Tuesday, February 19, 2013

A Day with the Nonnos

Dominic started daycare yesterday! Or at least, "daycare". See, we found a center months ago and set February 18 as his start date a few weeks before he was even born. As it turns out, there was a miscommunication and yesterday was actually a staff development day at the center. But, as luck would have it, my dads both had the day off work for President's Day! So Dominic got to spend a fun day with his Nonno Mark and Nonno Rich.

Tummy time with the Nonnos!
I was a little nervous dropping Dominic off in the morning. It wasn't because I worried about Dad and Rich taking care of him, of course (I knew they'd be absolutely great), but rather because it was the first full day Dominic would have away from me and Brian. But there was nothing to worry about. It looks like everyone had a great time, and I was pretty jealous of all the fun "Dominic play time" pictures I kept getting on my phone while I was spending those long hours at work!

Listening to the 'Toddler
Tunes' station
And in the end, I think yesterday was a nice transition for us as both Brian and I go back to work. Today, Dominic will go to his real daycare center, and that's going to be difficult for us no matter what. But since we already spent one day away from him yesterday while he was with trusted family, I think that'll ease the change just a bit.

Anyway, here goes! We'll hopefully have good things to report tonight at the end of day one!

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

3 Months!

As of 12:24pm today, Dominic is 3 months old!  He's grown quite a bit over the past three months and it's been exciting to seem him develop and get older.

Dominic before Christmas (< 2 months)
Dominic at 3 months

Over the past week, Dominic has had a special treat of having Grammy and Grandpa visit.  Luckily, they were in town through this morning and got to be here for his 3-month birthday before heading back to Nebraska.


Grammy, Dominic, and Grandpa

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Changing of the Guard

We're now into my favorite winter month: February!  (because it's the shortest)

Back in October and November, Andy and I put together a schedule for parental leave.  While there's plenty of websites, research, and articles out there that can support each side of the 'stay at home vs day care debate', we knew that the day care would begin someday for Dominic.  We just wanted to stay at home as long as we could before day care started up.  Some day cares accept babies as young as six months!  For us, we opted to stretch out finances and savings to keep Dominic at home until he was at least 3 months old.

Now that it's February, Andy's paternity leave at work is coming to an end.  He goes back to work on Monday for the first time since Dominic was born.  For Dominic, I think it has been great for him to have the stability of Andy being at home for such a long time.  Andy's great parenting has given Dominic lots of attention, taken him out for various excursions during the weekdays, and also resulted in plenty of great parenting experiences.

With Andy going back to work tomorrow, we're doing our final changing of the guard.  I staggered my paternity leave to include the first two weeks of February, so I'm officially back on paternity leave.  I'm really looking forward to spending time with Dominic at home.  Also, my parents will be in town from Wednesday night through next Tuesday which will make the time even more fun.  Between my parent's visit, Dominic's 3-month birthday, a trip to Tacoma to see Carly, and a lot more, these next two weeks are sure to go by really fast.  Before we know it, we'll have another changing of the guard and Dominic will be transitioning into day care.