Daniel went to daycare for the first time today. They have the kids ease in for a couple of hours a few days before they start for real. He was there from 8 to 10 a.m. this morning--long enough for me to treat myself to a pedicure. Too bad it's cold and dreary again-no sandal weather in sight! Anyway, Daniel did just fine--had a bottle and a very short nap, came home and ate again before settling in for an almost three hour nap. Sleeping is hard in a room full of busy babies, but amazingly, they do it. There were two sacked out in their cribs when I got there and two more playing on the floor. I remember being freaked out when Edward didn't sleep at first at daycare, but he got the hang of it and so will Daniel.

The picture above was a recent bath about which Daniel seemed to have a pretty strong opinion. I was in the other room getting ready to get him dressed and I heard John laughing uncontrollably. Daniel did not let go of John's shirt until we pried his fingers away to move him to to the towel.

My sister Nora captured this shot of me with both boys--definitely planning to get prints of this one for my desk at work! Edward would object to my use of the term "boys." When he hears me speak of them collectively, he corrects, "No, Daniel a baby. I big boy." Edward's verbal acuity took a turn against me the other day when he was not happy with my enforcing the time limit on playing Clifford games on pbskids.org. It was time for his nap so he had some juice and went whining to his room. As he climbed into bed he moaned, "I need paci, teeny blanket" (his two sleep aides.) Then he added, "I mad at my mommy." Wow, that's tough to take from a two-year-old! But he let it go and we had a pleasant afternoon after he woke up.

Daniel has been getting more expressive too--lots of smiles and some different cooing noises. It's so fun to sit close to him and watch him react to your changing facial expressions. He also appears to be on the road to thumb sucking. He often shoves his whole fist in his mouth and licks/sucks until the hand moves away. He is not yet aware that he controls that hand and could easily bring it back after it departs. John was holding him the other day and he was actually licking his hand like an ice cream cone (Daniel, not John--John wouldn't waste the energy unless there was actual ice cream involved.) We'll see if this all evolves to thumb sucking once he gets control of his appendages. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I love the idea of self-soothing. On the other hand, you can't tell a kid to leave his thumb in bed the way we do with Edward's pacifier. Time will tell.

Over the weekend, Edward enjoyed some TV basketball with the NCAA tournament in full swing. He doesn't pay attention long and soon was rooting around in the front closet, where he found John's basketball shoes and tried them on. He's surprisingly adept at walking in our shoes, and it never fails to amuse us.

We had a tragic event in town this week as a man killed his wife and four children before taking his own life. A member of a prominent local family, he was facing trial in April for embezzling more than half a million dollars from the bank he worked for. No one will ever know why he thought this was his only option. So many people are left grieving and wondering. Although we didn't know them, this story intersects with ours in a very small way. They were members of my church, and a funeral for the family will be held Saturday morning. We were supposed to have Daniel's baptism then. Since we have family (including Daniel's godparents) coming from out of town we couldn't just postpone a week, so we were able to arrange with the priest from the Newman Center at the UI to celebrate the sacrament there.