Firsts.

We went on our fist vacation as a family of 3. Headed to Kemah for the night to participate in the MS Walk on Saturday-- the thought of getting there by 8 from our house was just too much! We had a blast and it was an honor to walk for our friend, Nicole. So, it was Aaron's first vacation and first 5 K.

The weekend was followed by my first day back at work. I'm not really sure what to tell you there. It was both terribly hard to leave the little guy (with my parents for the first week) and also great to see my kids at school. They were excited to see me and have asked a lot of questions about the baby since. I've been pretty guarded about how much to share with them, but am so deeply appreciative of their love and support.

My parents seemed to have a wonderful time staying at home with baby. Foster care allows for very little in the way of babysitters. Hours of training, tb tests, interviews, and reference letters are required on top of the requisite criminal background checks. Needless to say, my parents are our only eligible babysitters.

We also had our first CPS home visit-- honestly, I'm not sure of the purpose (other than checking up on our home) of the home visits by either CPS or DePelchin. Both agencies come out monthly. So far, visits are short and generally uneventful. I did get a tiny bit more insight into the process of reunification and foster care, but mostly discovered that one aspect of the brokenness of CPS is that no one seems to work there long. Our caseworker gave me a little better picture of the timeline of hearings and decisions, but has worked for CPS for only months, so had very little in the way of details.

Finally, we started this week with baby's first days of daycare. I don't know if I've mentioned before, but I'm blessed to be able to work only 3 days/week. This is a lovely arrangement for our family-- the district continues to provide full benefits, I'm able to continue at a job I love, and I'm able to be a mom. He didn't nap much on Monday, but did much better today and his teacher even reported that he spent a lot of time "talking" to the other babies. I'm so happy he's having the opportunity to socialize and be loved on by so many people.

And most importantly, baby boy has really really started to smile and interact with objects- it's so awesome to see him grow-- there are new "firsts" all the time!