As I posted last week, the past couple of weeks have been tough because Clayton's been fighting a couple of different bugs. Although he was no longer sick, this past week was tough too. Clayton returned to daycare after being out for most of the last 2 weeks. Sending and leaving him at daycare has always been emotionally rough - it seems strange to me to leave my kid with others while I go to the hospital to work with other parents' kids. Something is wrong with that. But this leaving was made tougher this week by the daily reports I got from the daycare workers that "Clayton is just not himself." Everyday...these women who see him more during the week than I do were telling me that "he was sad," "he cried all day" and "did not eat well" followed by the question, "are you sure there's not something wrong with him?" Although I always answered strongly that he was fine, these questions of course heightened my normal maternal anxiety. What mother is ever 100% sure that their child is perfectly well, especially when she has to leave him daily with someone else? Add to that the fact that my day-to-day life is filled with kids who seemed fine until the catastrophic thing happened...brain injury, brain tumor, epilepsy, autism...things that every mother and father dread even though logically we know the rate of occurrence of these things is quite small. Needless to say...when I walked in to pick up Clayton on Friday afternoon and the most negative of the daycare personnel excitedly came up to me exclaiming, "He's back! Our happy Clayton is back!" I was relieved and thrilled. Whew! Finally, the adorable sweet boy I was seeing for a couple of hours each evening, was showing himself to the daycare folks again. The validation I felt after hearing those few words was incredible.
Clayton, who of course is oblivious to the anxiety of his mother, seems to continue to grow, laugh and have firsts at a rate that is astounding us. Turns out his first tooth emerged on Monday (lower left central incisor) - no pictures of it yet, but we'll post one as soon as he let's us snap it!. Until then...an up close photo of his sweet face.
We stopped swaddling Clayton at night this week. Although we were fearful of doing so, he was basically wiggling out of the swaddle within minuets on a nightly basis. And, he seems to be able to sleep well without the swaddle - on most nights this week he slept from 7 pm until 4 am without a peep. On the first night without the swaddle, this is how he fell asleep. Too cute.
Ryan continues to be focused on teaching Clayton to crawl, despite my reminders to him that once Clayton learns this skill, our lives will change drastically. Anyway, so far, Clayton seems poised to learn how to move himself forward....
...and clearly has the thigh strength to do so....
...but ends up going backwards!
We'll keep you all posted on his progress. Finally, here's the official week 27 photo.
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