Whole new world

Today, Jane turned 15 weeks old (I'll be happy when I can stop counting in weeks... maybe I can do that now?) and started her first day of daycare. We're doing a nanny share with a family who lives in our 'hood. It seemed like a pretty good situation when we first discovered/heard about it, and so far we like the nanny. Liz was very worried and stressed about Jane starting daycare, plus she went back to work today too. So, this is a new twist on being new parents that we're sorting through. But Liz, as always, has been very focused on this and has just about thought of everything in order to keep things from falling apart. And for that, I'm very thankful. Liz has been focused on Jane and being a (great) mom, and I've been tyring my best to be a helpful dad and husband.

But the baby thing continues to open our eyes to a whole new world. Now as parents we have to worry about China. Not China as in "those commie reds," but China as in "that country that supplies the US (world?) with baby products." Seriously, seemingly every baby product we own -- from toys to clothes and everything else except our bottles -- are produced in China. And now that China has demonstrated that their standards for quality control are not the greatest, we've got to worry like crazy people whether our baby is exposed to all sorts of bad stuff. I knew I was signing up for (partly) a lifetime of worry by having a baby, but this is some serious modern-day worrying. Sure doesn't seem like the garden-variety worrying my parents did (eg, out past curfew, did he dress himself properly today, etc.).

Now I pay attention to all sorts of parent/child-related content on the web... such as this, uh, interesting story about people reserving domain names for their kids. Who knew? Not me. But in this case, I don't think I'll be reserving a domain for Jane. That just seems a bit excessive.