what a week.

this past week, i’ve stayed home with baby dude (tuesday to sunday).  first, because he was sick and too contagious to be at daycare, then i got sick and he was still too contagious to take to daycare, so we were both sick together.  for the first days, i waffled between feeling giddy at being able to stay home all day and feeling trapped because, well, it’s a long story, but the short version is that my driveway was a disaster (there’s still some caution tape up) and getting to the car would have been a challenge.  i waffled between being amazed at my child’s awesomely mellow disposition and being frustrated when he was decidedly NOT mellow–especially during the two days when J was in Chicago for work and I couldn’t tag-team like we normally do.  But then I reminded myself that stay-at-home-moms and single moms do this kind of stuff all the time.  And some of them have more than one kid.  And some of them have kids with much more challenging personalities than mine does.  And I told myself to pull it together.  And I got an amazing offer of help from a friend who reads my blog (she came over for a few hours on Saturday to play with the baby and managed somehow to put him to sleep while reading to him.  She realized he was asleep when he started snoring.) And somehow, by tonight I’m secretly hoping that this dreadful weather we’re having (sleet?  icy roads?  yuck!) will make it impossible for anyone to go to work and they’ll have to shut down the city again so I can stay home one more day.  I’m really not sure when that transformation happened in my head, but it might have been when i realized what a gift staying home for a week with my almost-one-year-old boy has been.

i’ve been able to watch him eat his first mac-and-cheese (also his first chili, but no photos of that):

put a band-aid on his first band-aid-worthy ouchie (shots at the dr’s office don’t count):

observe him beginning to transition to one (mostly long) nap per day and see him pull himself to standing in the crib for the first time (SO proud of himself!):

and watch him graduate from the caterpillar scootch to full-fledged crawling!  (video to be posted as soon i finish editing it.)

note to new parents who are dreading mobility:  yes, once they can move they can get into a lot more things they shouldn’t BUT they also can entertain themselves for much longer stretches.  You just gotta watch out for the sudden silences with accompanying lip-smacking noises.

it was tough at times (apologies to my friend M who heard the apex of my sicky pitiful self on Friday morning), but I learned things about myself, my boy, my marriage and discovered that a week-long break from work is always good for reminding you of what’s really important.