Journey with You

Thursday was DH’s birthday. My mother-in-law gave us some money to go to a nice restaurant. Being here for so many year, I haven’t had many chances to go to a fancy restaurant. I suggested to DH that we go to a quite famous French restaurant here. That’s not a family restaurant and we don’t think it’s appropriate to bring Cyrus along so we asked my mother-in-law if she can watch Cyrus for a few hours Wednesday evening so DH and I can go and have a nice birthday celebration dinner. She said yes.

I dropped Cyrus off at her house around 4pm and left twenty minutes after. It felt weired driving home without Cyrus. It was also the first time after Cyrus’ birth that only DH and I went out together.

We’re pretty happy with the food served at the restaurant. One little thing I wasn’t too crazy about was the wait. It took us about 5 minutes to finish each course but took more than 15 minutes for the next course to come. The dinner was dragged way too long and I started worrying about Cyrus and my mother-in-law.

It was eight when we got back to her house. To our surprise, when we walked in, he was having a great time playing with this new toy my mother-in-law bought him. He didn’t seem upset at all. My mother-in-law told us that he ate all the food I prepared for him, which was another surprise. He’s been quite a picky eater these days and we always have a hard time feeding him.

Thursday was Cyrus’ first day at the day care. I dropped him off first thing in the morning so he can have breakfast with other children there. I hid myself behind the door and watched him for about 15 minutes. I saw him feeding himself grapes and pancakes. I felt I was going to cry. No that I was sad, I was happy to see him growing up and being on his own. I said goodbye to him before I left and he didn’t cry.

I went home and it felt so strange being in the house without Cyrus. I got a lot of cleaning done, which was kind of nice. After DH got out of work, we went to pick him up. When we got there, he was sitting on Sharon’s lap, looked upset. Sharon told me the last hour before we got there was rough, him crying. He cried as soon as seeing us and didn’t want to put down again. Poor love! But other than that, he seemed to be doing okay. He ate and napped with everybody else.

Today is my first day at work. I dropped him off around 8am and stayed for about 10 minutes. Sharon gave him a bowl with cereal and milk and a spoon. The problem is Cyrus doesn’t know how to use spoon yet. He used fingers to pick out some cereal and then spill the whole thing in no time. She then gave him some bananas. He ate some then started doing his usual thing: throwing food on the floor. She assumed that as a sign of being done and took the bananas away. I said goodbye and left for work. He didn’t cry.

During lunch I called to check up on him. Sharon told me he only had the yogurt I brought over for lunch, nothing else. I felt bad, guilty, and worried. I think the problem is that Sharon didn’t really “actively” feed him like we do. She would just leave the food on the tray and if they eat it they eat it, if they don’t they don’t. Cyrus doesn’t really have good enough hand-eye coordination to use a spoon or a fork to feed himself. He still needs to be fed most of the time. Also, you need to keep switch from one food to another many times during the feeding. I don’t think Sharon does that either.

Before he went to day care, he usually has two to three bowel movements a day. However, he didn’t have any yesterday and only had one today (after dinner). Obviously he wasn’t eat enough.

DH and I agree that we need to discuss this with Sharon again and hopefully she is willing to make some changes in the way she feeds Cyrus.