Stranger Danger

Sloan is a little bit of a Momma's boy.  There I said it, and to be honest I like it. 

He also loves to hang out with his dad, he gets his cuddles in (and his way) with his Mom, and then Dad is for the rough and tumble stuff, and he does love to be tickled, thrown up in the air, and Reg knows just how to "rough" him up to get the big belly laughs.  For some reason Reg rubbing his hair on Sloan's belly - is the funniest thing ever if you are Sloan.

And I should mention this is Dad's idea of completing the bedtime routine.  I feed Sloan supper, bath him, turn the lights down, give him a little massage, get him all ready for bed time, and then Reg comes home.  This video gives you an idea of what Reg's pre-bed routine looks like...

I bet you can hardly quit yawning yourself now too!

Sloan and I have been living in a little bubble for the last 10 months.  We do go out, we go shopping, for walks, out for the occasional lunch, we go out to work....ummm, he's been swimming once...ok so not so much on the social interactions.  I really didn't think a baby needed to be "socialized".  But one day all of sudden, every other human on the planet posed a big problem for Sloan.  The poor little guy was scared of everyone.  He wouldn't go to anyone, and if someone leaned over to talk to him in the shopping cart - they got an earful from Sloan.  Not good times.

Time to begin "Project Socialize."  To start, I enrolled us in baby sign language classes, we were going to learn to communicate with each other while secretly I was"socializing" my baby.  We arrived at the instructors house, ready to take on 6 or 8 babies and their moms.  She started the class with an announcment "good news" there was only 2 of us enrolled, and we were basically going to get private lessons.  Great.

Back to the drawing board.  Soon, I had Sloan enrolled in everything I could find (except Swimming lessons, you know how I feel about the water) we went to Toddler Time at the Library (fantastic free program that 12 - 16 kids attend every week, our favorite), Kindermusik,  and sign language.  We also checked out the playgroup at the Community Links center, scheduled lunches out and make a concentrated effort to go and visit someone everyday.

And it was 1/2 successful, Sloan is quite social these days, unfortunately, guess who's not so social now...me!  I was exhausted.  What a lot of work it is to teach a baby to like other people, oh how I missed our bubble!  Worse than that, I have found some of the other mom's in our groups to be...let's just say challenging.  For example, the Mom who informed Sloan didn't walk yet because he clearly spent his days in the circle of neglect, aka the excersaucer.  This didn't help socialize me, not one little bit.

But I'm nothing if not incredibly stubbon, so we have perservered, because the ultimate social activity is on the horizon...the 1st Birthday party!

Love,  Julie