So Mel has not yet turned up. I continue to ask at Publix customer service, but to no avail. I continue to be sad for our beloved bear.

Liam stopped drinking formula over the course of the last week or so. We felt like we were constantly filling it up and throwing it out an hour later completely full. His one-year check-up is on Friday, and his birthday on Wednesday, so we decided, instead of only giving him water and fruit-water, that we'd start trying out whole milk.

This leads me to my story, which I can only start with a big old "GRRRRRRR!!!" I was making sure with his teacher at day care today that they have milk available and that we don't need to bring our own. There was another mom there, whose daughter is 9 days younger than Liam, who overheard and said "you're giving him milk?" I said "yeah, he'll be one in two days." And she looks at me like I'm evil and says "you're giving him milk without asking the doctor?"

Part of me didn't feel like I needed to justify myself, but the insecure part of me wanted to go on a rampage and say "YES! Yes, we are. Call DFCS because we made a unilateral decision to give our baby a substance that is perfectly consumable by most human beings 3 days before they say babies can have it, and we *GASP* didn't consult a doctor!!!!" I mean, COME ON.

Irritating judgment aside, I default to the oft-mentioned "best advice we've ever received" from the last nurse we had at the hospital who said "he's your baby - you do what you think is right." I tell ya, that advice has stuck with us through thick and thin. He's OUR BABY. In most situations, there are several right answers, several ways to do things, and I don't feel the need to get a permission slip from a doctor every time we want to stray from the norm (a whole THREE DAYS early, mind you).

Uggh. I wish people would mind their own business sometimes.

I think I scared my poor little baby pretty badly last night. I went in to his room to peek at him before I went to bed, and I smelled a faint smell of poop as soon as I walked in there. I couldn't be sure, so I felt his behind for tactile evidence and was still having trouble. Then I initiated some internal dialogue, doing a little cost-benefit analysis as to whether or not it was something I should pursue investigating further at this particular moment.

So he was lying there, stiff as a board, opening his eyes and closing them. It was as if he was playing dead. I'm not sure if I am misinterpreting the situation, but I think that he was scared to death, not sure who was standing over him and afraid for his life. As soon as I walked away, he started screaming. I picked him up, and he was clutching on to me for dear life, as if he was so completely relieved that it was just me (and he was poopy, by the way).

I just wonder, though...I know babies are capable of fear at this point, but don't they have to understand the world around them enough to know what they should be afraid OF (pardon my sentence-ending preposition)? Don't you have to have formed the concept in your mind that there are bad people in this world in order to understand that there are people that you should fear? So would he understand that if there was a stranger standing over him during the night that the stranger could potentially hurt him? Maybe we just have a natural instinct that tells us that strangers can hurt us and that we should fear unknown people standing over us watching us sleep.

He sure doesn't understand that he should be afraid of the distance from the bed to the floor, as I repeatedly have to catch him mid-lunge as he tries to fly off the bed.

Questions to ponder. It would be nice if we knew what was going on in those little minds!