It is so nice to be home again. I really can’t even express it.

Noah and Mommy

I had a great time sleeping through the night and confering with learned colleagues in the perfect weather of Palm Springs, but nothing beats coming home.

All my pumped milk made it back ok. Because I am naive and inexperienced, I failed to think through the logical consequences of “newspaper insulates really well” and wrapped most of it in newspaper before asking the hotel to freeze it, which meant that only the milk that was in the hotel freezer for 2 days was actually frozen, but all of it stayed frozen all the way home. (One bag was kind of slushie, but I count it as frozen.)

The rest was cold all the way back, and is now frozen.

Noah had enough to drink, with 1 bottle and 3 bags left over, for a total of roughly 15 oz.

After I unpacked it at home, and repacked it for the freezer here, I went to his school and hung out for about 2 hours. Noah was a little uncertain when I first got there, but then I nursed him to sleep, and when he woke up, he was superhappy and excited to see me. Yes, I sat there and held him in my arms for 45 minutes while he napped. I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving him again.
I also learned that I am raising a kisser.

Noah kissed me, 1 teacher, and 2 other babies while I was there. His kisses are wide open and wet, and now that he has TWO teeth — yes, he sprouted a second one while I was gone — they are a little toothy. We may have to work on learning to kiss with the mouth shut. (Which is, in fact, the only way we ever kiss him. But since he can’t see our mouths when we’re kissing his cheeks, this may be unclear.)

The baby that they are no longer calling his girlfriend because we finally asked that they work on modeling male and female friendships instead of romanticizing children’s relationships, is obviously and truly Noah’s best friend.

He’d been kissing a baby who can’t move herself, when he heard Baby K start babbling. BAM! He was off like a shot, leaving the helpless baby to entertain herself, while he crawled excitedly towards Baby K. The two of them sat there grinning and babbling and poking each other in the face and pulling each other’s hair, and Noah could hardly decide whether to look at her or at me.

Unfortunately, the teachers think K is teaching Noah how to pull hair. She has naturally punk rock hair that absolutely begs to be touched — imagine if David Bowie’s hair grew that way naturally, with no product. So everyone touches K’s hair, and as a result, she thinks the normal way to greet people is to pull their hair. Just like Noah thinks it is to kiss them and stick your fingers in their mouth.

Nap over! Here’s another picture, with BOTH TEETH.

Both Teeth