noah benjamin thompson: 3 months and lots of changes

It has been a very busy two weeks with a lot of changes and firsts for Noah. He watched his first NCAA tournament (sadly not a good year for either of his teams), celebrated his 3 month birthday, celebrated St. Patty's day, led a parade, celebrated mommy and daddy's 5 year anniversary, had his first sleepover with Mads, had his first real babysitter, met his friend Carson and went to his first Play 2 Grow class.

He is smiling and babbling all the time and is just a very happy baby. He has grown so much that sometimes when I pick him up from daycare I feel like I don't even recognize him. Speaking of daycare, he seems to have adjusted okay to being there but we aren't totally crazy about it. I thought long and hard about why and realized there are three reasons. First it is just plain hard to leave him (which I can't do anything about), second I worry that since he is the youngest in his class he gets overlooked because he doesn't do much besides sit there and smile and third he doesn't nap well because he is distracted and can't be swaddled. The teachers all seem wonderful and really like him, but in the end we decided to pull him out and get a nanny for the next 2 months until he starts at the Suzuki school, which was our first choice for daycare. I figure by then he will be over 5 months old, close to taking just 2 naps a day and be in a class with more kids close to his age. Finding a nanny was not easy, but I am really excited about the girl we hired and think Noah will love her. They are meeting for the first time this weekend and she starts the second week in April.

Noah's first sleepover with Mads went very well. As you can see he was in heaven with Michelle and Jordan. It was nice to leave him with them because they followed the same schedule with Mads so they knew how to do all of his routines. It also allowed us to have a fun time at our friends Jimmy and Sayako's wedding, which was at a winery north of here. The wedding was beautiful and we had fun dressing up and being around adults for so many hours!

His first time with the babysitter was also at Michelle and Jordan's house when we all went to a charity event. He did pretty well except that I got a text around 8:45pm that he had spit up all over his onesie, miracle blanket and pac n play. Fortunately his sitter is a pro and got him cleaned up, in a new blanket and back to sleep.

Sadly the same night of the event Ben came down with a nasty stomach flu and was out of commission for almost a full week. That meant I got to play single mom, which was kind of fun and kind of exhausting. I really have a new respect for single parents because doing it for more than a few days is really hard.

Noah and I also went to his friend Play 2 Grow class recently and discovered he loves to swing. Luckily we have baby swings in the playground in our neighborhood, so I've taken him there a few times since. I signed us up for a block of classes, so hopefully he continues to enjoy it and I meet some other moms with babies his age so we can have more play dates.