Parenting at the one-week mark

One week in, it seems like Quinn has always been a part of our lives. But it's still all so new, both to him and to us. He reveals more of himself every day, and it's so much fun to see what we'll learn about him each day.

The boy we have now is not the boy we met last Saturday. Looking back now, I can see that the poor kid was shell-shocked. He just retreated into himself, I think as the only way he knew how to cope. He wasn't ready to acknowledge us, much less look us right in the eyes.

Our first breakthrough was the discovery of the beloved mirror, which remains the can't-miss cheerer-upper. Since then it's been one tiny discovery after another, all of them amazing.

What we see now is a kid who is very mechanically oriented, with a killer sense of humor and near-perfect comic timing. He loves to entertain a crowd, but he's equally happy examining a toy to figure out what it does and how it works. We gave him a little Tonka truck this morning, and he immediately flipped it over and started spinning the wheels. He loves to be outside and wants to be on the go. If we stop to look at something, he starts fussing. He has a monster attention span, and will happily sit and play with his stacking cups - no exaggeration, I swear - for an hour. Getting ready in the morning is a breeze, bless this child. We wake up, snuggle for a while, have a bottle, and then he starts looking around for those stacking cups.

His injured shoulder seems to be fully functional, but he will do everything in his power NOT to use it. Hand him something on the right side, and he'll twist all the way around to grab it with his left hand. Whether it's out of habit or pain, we can't tell. But definitely a good amount of therapy awaits.

In short, my very unbiased opinion is that he's a spectacular, very special little boy. We're lucky to know him, much less to be his parents.