"Such an easy baby!"

I've gotten lots of sympathy from my last post about army bureaucracy and enrolling Spartacus; I'd like to happily report that Spartacus is now enrolled in DEERS, TriCare, and got assigned to the pediatrician we wanted, so the daycare forms are now filled out.  I'd like to give TriCare a shout-out -  I was able to enroll him and get a pediatrician in a nine-minute phone call, INCLUDING all the phone menus.  So much better than the FOUR HOURS spent on post for something that took their representative four minutes to do.

In other news, Spartacus got to go to school with me this week for some our staff development.  Even though I'm taking the first six weeks of school off, I still wanted to go to the training.  For one, some of it is quite useful (especially the class I'm teaching!).  Two, I love getting to see all my teacher friends without the stress of the school year.  Everyone looks so tanned and relaxed and optimistic, and we get to go out to lunch, which never happens during our 23-minute lunches during the school day.  Three, I get to show off my cute baby.

The preAP sophomore English teacher and I showing off our baby bumps!

He was a big hit.  He got held by the entire English department, much of the Spanish and science departments, and my principal.  Despite all this excitement throwing off any nap routine I hope to develop, he was extremely well-behaved.  He only cried twice in two days - and only because he was hungry and I didn't move fast enough.  He sat in on the three-hour all-district convocation Wednesday morning, and I had numerous people tell me they didn't even know he was there, he was so quiet - and he was awake the whole time!  What mother doesn't like hearing people gush over how good her baby is?  This was also the first time I nursed in public - I wore a cute nursing cover, but I had still been a bit anxious.

The other happiness was discovering that Spartacus and I could be out of the house and at school by 7:30  in the morning and be somewhat presentable - this was a big hurdle for me, but we did it! In fact, on Thursday I had planned to be to school by 8:15 but failed to set an alarm and woke up at 7:15 when he wanted to eat.  I managed to dress, feed and change my baby, and be in the car by 8 AM, arriving at school a mere fifteen minutes late.  Now obviously I can't arrive fifteen minutes late when I'm actually teaching, but I am still proud of doing it with a six-week-old baby in tow. Of course, I've virtually stopped caring what I look like, so that saves in my morning routine which now pretty much consists of "put on deodorant" and "brush teeth."

And for the grandmas out there, here's 16 seconds of my baby being cute: