Jed's 1st week at day care, or Mom's back to work?

The 1st week working after 54 weeks off was uneventful. Which I think is good. The job will be rewarding I think and the work isn't stressful yet.
Jed's new daycare provider is Jessie Carr. Jessie and I used to work together at TGIF 12 years ago and have been friends via Amy Jackson until last year when we had Jedidiah. She has become one of my best and most trusted Mommy friends. I have found myself going to Jessie for Mom advice a lot in the past year and I respect her a lot. She loves Jed and her whole family is wonderful to Jed and he LOVES them too.
He doesn't even seem to care that I leave... it would be hard for me if I didn't know he was so happy and loved and safe with the Carrs.
He is teething like a mad man and still all over the board on nap time. He has a more consistent schedule with Jessie than me. But he does sleep 10 to 12 hours at night. Which is a new thing and the secret to my new found sanity.
Jed is resting with Daddy so he is FRESH for his 1 year photo shoot with Karrn Frost today. Karrn is another Friday's friend from 1997 who popped back into my life via Facebook. Mock it all you want but without it I would have gone insane this past year. Jed and I have tons of new/old friends via Facebook. And the best people in my world are from TGI Fridays.
(Some folks had high school and college buddies and I have Fridays buddies!)
I am super excited about the holidays this year as we were in NICU, DeVos and Mott hospitals last year. So this is really our first holiday as a family.
Since Jed's birthday I have found myself a bit teary eyed every day remembering where we were last year. Like today, Andrea, my sister, and I went to the Byron Center High craft fair. 160 crafters and my xmas shopping is pretty much done. But, for the 1st 20 minutes or so, I was having a hard time because I kept remembering that last year, I didn't buy anything because I didn't know what our plans were for the holidays. Jed was 4 weeks old and in NICU and I hadn't told anyone about his heart yet. I remember that Andrea was shopping like crazy and buying stuff for Jed and I just tried not to cry the whole time last year.
But have no fear for my emotional well being... I was a shopping fool today. Thank goodness I only brought $60... okay I own Andrea $10 but the Kuiper Girls are done... once I hunt down one crafter in Hudsonville next week.
And we are planning to go get trees with Andrea, Jeff and Paige on December 6th. Yeah, last year, Jim was SO MAD about getting a tree. He did not want one. And my Mom was scared to death to watch Jed while we were gone because he was so dusky and sick and just got back home from the stuffed up nose incident that put him back into DeVos 6 days after coming home from NICU.
Yeah and the "I told you so" of it all was that poor tree sat in our house all alone drying up while we were in Ann Arbor for 5 weeks. It was a fiasco tearing it down when we finally got home the 2nd week in January. Thank you MOM for helping!
But this year, we can't wait to get one up and only decorate the top half for Jed!!! Oooohhhh, the wonder of a 1 year old! The plans I created last December in my mind while I prayed at Mott are going to all come to fruition!
I feel like these next few blogs will be me dealing with the memories of last holiday season. So bear with me as I heal and remember. Remembering makes me appreciate all that is good in the world and all the Grace that God has given us. And all the goodness of friendship and family.
So even if I sound teary, know that are tears of thankfulness.

Happy 1st Birthday Jedidah

This is Jed's 1st Blog. We have been using carepages.org since his birth but I feel that he is way to healthy to continue using it unless something changes.
For those of you that would like to see Jed's 1st year, you can go to https://www.carepages.com/carepages/Jedidiah_Kuiper and catch up at your leisure.

For those looking for the abridged version I will post one later on.

Jed had a great 1st birthday with his family. I decided that family only was plenty of people and he lived up to the pundits predictions and opened maybe on present and his cousins took care of the rest. We had tacos and rice and cake and Dairy Queen Ice Cream cake too.

Jed is currently over 17 lbs and 29 inches long. His development is almost on track with his birth age, (versus his adjusted age). He is crawling and doing the downward dog, pulling himself up, walking along the couch and getting into everything.

His favorite toys are remotes, phones, books, toy pianos, drums, and anything he can chew on.

He has 6 teeth too. 4 of which have come in over the last month.

I will post more later,

Love,

J3