Closing and Beginning

Tonight I finished my last class of Research and Practice in the Preparation of Teachers at USC. I presented twice tonight & turned in my final paper on multicultural teacher education.

In a few weeks, I start a statistics course for another 6 weeks...

Atticus turns 4 months on Monday. He has changed a lot from 3 to 4 months. He is more deliberate in his behavior - not that he is manipulative or deceptive, but he knows that crying will elicit a response from us. He had a mild case of thrush a few weeks ago, & I'm hoping the white spots on his tongue are not residual signs of that. He loves to feel the texture of things, and he is more deliberate in the motor skills in his hands. He'll lie under the play mat and gingerly tap the hanging animals. Pretty soon, he'll be tugging on them! He also likes to hold our hands when we put him to bed. Sometimes he will put my hand against his face. He also does this with his lovie (a little blanket with a stuffed animal head attached to one corner).

Atticus has decidedly chosen bottle over breast, which saddens & frustrates me. I'm tired of pumping and washing bottles constantly. I've been told that it's very difficult to coax a 4-month-old baby back to the breast. I should be ashamed of myself. I haven't been working, so he shouldn't have been using bottles in the first place.

We're flying to Singapore in a few days, so Atticus's determination to refuse the breast makes our lives more tedious. We'll just have to manage.

Last night, we sat him in the Bumbo chair for the first time & fed him rice cereal. He seemed to like the spoon. We'll try to make a habit out of feeding him rice cereal now.

Oh, & Atticus now laugh WITH us. If he's in a good mood, he will laugh in short bursts without having been tickled. We love it. We can't get enough of his noises, except crying.

I'll be teaching at a public charter school in South Central Los Angeles this fall. I'm very excited. More to come later...