Nicholas is growing up so fast and we are having so much fun teaching him new things every day and he is truly like a little sponge absorbing it and then expressing the words and looks and the like in his own special way.
He eats mainly pureed fruits and veggies still with puffs as snacks but not too keen on textures yet. I have read until I am exhausted about it but all toddlers are different in their likes and dislikes neither is perfect or ideal so the pressure is off of us in that department.
These are the things that we can control on a daily basis: how he is treated, dressed, played with, fed and taken care of and loved. What I am about to tell you is what we cannot control.
This status update is from my Facebook account on July 30th:
An innocent trip to Kohls today turned out to be infuriating when a little girl about 3 or so came up to Nicholas in his stroller, grabbed his hand and proceeded to bit down on his fingers with all her might and Paul had to pry her off of him and she scratched Nicholas in 2 places causing one of them to draw blood. I am so angry about the whole thing...long story short, the mother could care less and the store manager knew her so she gave us her info in case we needed it but while she was doing so the little girl was trying to kick Nicholas in the head while she was holding her. If you have a child with that type of behavior, please restrain her and don't have her roaming around terrorizing other kids or people because she was even trying to grab stuff from the manager. Nicholas is fine now but he had deep impressions from her teeth on his middle finger knuckles and he was screaming so much he couldn't catch his breath. We were all in shock. Paul took him to the water cooler to wash his hand off with the cold water and we tried to calm him down. We were having a great day and it was quickly ruined...my blood pressure is through the roof right now.
Needless to say, the above was an awful experience for us. My friends and family rallied around us offering support and advice and extreme measures that we should have taken but we chose to be more aware and alert of other children around Nicholas and would rather not dwell on it anymore. Some people said they would have been in jail if they were the parent but Paul and I would rather be here for Nicholas than to create more stress in this situation. Our first thought was to get him out of the vicinity of the little girl and taken care of.
I am writing all of this so that Nicholas will be able to read it someday. "Baby, we love you so much and we were both sickened and heartbroken that we failed in protecting you that day...never, again!"
So that was the tumultuous ending to July. We may not have seen fireworks on the 4th but it was an explosion of shock and horror that we will never forget!
