Averi rocking Ali, then trying to inhabit her space. Notice Sam in the corner.
The way it works is, when its your week to work, you get a postcard in the mail reminding you. Then, on Saturday, The nursery director calls all the workers to remind them that it is their week. However, if you’ve been doing it long enough and have a “perfect record” of attendance (or calling beforehand if you can’t come), she eventually quits calling you on Saturday.
Well, yesterday it was our day in the nursery (Chris works with me once a month). So I show up to the nursery after Sunday School, and the only two people in there (with 6 babies!!) are Bob and Greta, and it’s their first Sunday ever to work in there! I am shocked, because we almost always have a supervisor in there, and when we don’t, we at least have someone very experienced in there. Not that Bob and Greta weren’t doing a good job – they were doing fantastic! All the babies were sleeping or content, and everything looked well under control. I just felt extremely sorry for them, because, well, they really got the short end of the stick on their first Sunday ever!!
After me lamenting and apologizing for a few minutes, Greta finally meekly says, “Well, actually, I think, maybe, you were supposed to be the nursery supervisor this morning.”
I gasped. Surely not!! I was working second hour!
She said “well, I think Laura wrote a note on your postcard” (which I quickly glanced at and threw away) “asking you to work the first hour.”
I felt terrible!! Here I was shocked that these new workers were left alone, and it was all my fault!
Anyway, it worked out fine – they did GREAT (They should be promoted immediately!!), and two people that were supposed to work the next hour couldn’t come, so Chris and I just took their place.
However, I will now be demoted back to getting Saturday calls, and I have now ruined my perfect nursery record.
Oh well, at least it gave me something to blog about.
To continue our nursery saga, apparently all of the babies were on their best behavior for the “newbies” the first hour, because they ALL melted down for our hour. It was chaos!!! It hasn’t been that bad in there in I don’t know how long. They were all sleepy and fussy and inconsolable. Totally wierd!
So, I think that it did it in for Chris. It’s a wierd thing – once you have a baby of your own and you truly experience the pain of inconsolable crying and GET PAST IT (I promise, inconsolable crying does end somewhere around 6 months old!!), you have much less ability to cope with other babies crying. See, before we had a baby of our own, working in the nursery was so romantic and sweet. Chris was AMAZING. He could put any baby to sleep, and console any baby by taking them over to the window to look out. He would think of songs that had each baby’s name in it and sing it to them!! “Sweet Caroline”, and “Mandy”. . . It was amazing!! However, hearing a crying baby now is kind of like a flashback from being in war – it reminds us too much of the painful war with Ali Qaida last year, and I think his Post-Traumatic-Stress-Syndrome is just too deep to keep working in the nursery. I have Mommy genes, so I can handle it a little better. He handles it great externally, but it just eats him up internally. So, after six years of loyal service, Chris is going to retire from the nursery. Hey babe – sorry you got such a bad retirement party in the nursery yesterday!! :)
Babies’ bodies cannot regulate heat as well as adults. Be sure to keep baby in well-controlled temperatures. Never let baby be in the cold for long!
Carefully supervise baby when playing near unstable objects.
Do not let baby share food with animals.
Now for some tips on what to expect from babies:
Learning to tell if a baby has a dirty diaper can sometimes be challenging. Just find a method that seems to work for you and stick with it.
Don’t expect your baby to be attentive in church their first Sunday.
Other funny occurances:
Notice me standing on the front steps of this house for perspective on how ginormous it is!!
We’re pretty sure this is the biggest one we saw:
While we were looking at the houses, we had our first alligator sightings!!! This is the first one we saw:
When we saw that alligator, he was sunning himself on the bank. Me, being the adventurous, animal loving-and-unafraid one, wanted to get Chris to take my picture with him. I was going to get closer to him, but Chris rather forcefully (for him) commanded me to stop, turn around, and get my picture taken from the road. So I turned around and posed, and I hear the alligator start running!!! Chris gasped, and I lost my unafraid facade and ran for my life!!! Next thing I know, Chris is laughing, because the alligator had just gotten spooked from us and jumped back into the pond! It was a hilarious moment, and it made Chris feel good to know that I, too, can be spooked by animals.
(notice the small body of water between me and alligator #3) :)
We also saw an eagle and his nest (nest in the center tree of the picture below):
We then went on a “marsh tower” to get a couple pictures of the marsh. It was very rickety and wiggly – it shook significantly every time we took a step!!
A picture of us from the tower:
The rickety stairs down from the rickety tower:
It was a beautiful night, and so it was great to go out to dinner. Here are pictures of us at the Bohicket Marina where we ate dinner:
