Day Care - 1 Month Later

On December 7th, Andrew started daycare. It's a great facility that is literally within walking distance from our house. In some ways, we were thrilled about Andrew starting daycare and in other ways, we were so sad. Daycare was going to give us full-time help with Andrew instead of part time with an in-home nanny. It was actually less expensive for full-time daycare than it was for part-time in-home care.  And, the biggest part was that Andrew is an extremely happy and social baby that was not getting much interaction with kids his age. We knew he would absolutely love to be able to play with other kids and start to create friendships.

Our First Day - We walked to the school

We had a choice with his daycare - start him in with the older infants or start him in with the early toddlers. Older infants were 10 - 14 months old, crawling, still on the bottle and napping more than one time per day. Early Toddlers were 12-18 months old walking, on the sippy cup and only one nap a day. Andrew was 12 months old, not walking, still taking a bottle for his milk but on the sippy cup for everything else and was somewhere between 1 and 2 naps a day. We decided to shoot high and then move back if he was not in the right class. The early toddlers get to go outside twice a day, had more kids and more structured class interaction like painting, reading, shapes, etc... It was the right decision.

The outside play area for the kiddos

We figured that starting him out with a full day during the first week may be hard so we transitioned him slowly by putting him in for 6 hours, then 6.5, then 7, and so on. This transition did not work worth a darn. He was not a happy baby! He cried that silent-not-breathing kind of cry each morning that we dropped him off. It was heartbreaking for me. Then, he got sick. Week 1 - 4 days in to it - my kiddo had fever over 100. He got over that and we made it to week 2 - 1/2 of the class was sent home due to having RSV, which is extremely contagious. UGG. Off we went to the doctor because at this point our turkey's fever was back and had been for 3-4 days. No RSV, but a nice ear infection. 2 Days later - our child actually stayed up ALL NIGHT long projectile vomiting. He finally went to sleep at about 8am after Jeff and I had called hospitals, on-call doctors and tried to figure out the right thing to do. At this point, it's December 23rd and we are back to the doctor for what was just a stomach bug that got much worse with the ear infection. 2 big shots later, our kiddo is back at the house and sleeping again. He felt much better but I was cursing daycare at this point.

After a loooonng night of being sick.

 As a side note, I've always been one of those people that looked down at mom's whose children have an actual snot river going from their nose to their mouth. It's absolutely disgusting and I could never figure out how someone could let their child run around with that situation occurring. I have to apologize now for being so critical of these moms. Before having a child in daycare, I did not realize that snot actually flows out of a child's nose similar to the current of the Mississippi River. It's constant, non-stop and it's hard to catch it and even harder to talk a baby in to "blowing" when they have no clue what that means. Not to mention, after you wipe their noses 1,000 times, the nose is red and sore and the child now does the head-dance to keep the kleenex away from the sore nose. Don't get me wrong, I still think it is gross and I try to fix the problem as much as I can, but I only have one child - I can't imagine having to play this game with more.

Andrew is now back in daycare after a great break for Christmas and a week with my parents while we went on a much-needed cruise with friends (blog about that to come later). Because of the long break, it's like week one all over again. He is not impressed with going to "school" - no matter how much I build it up, dance around getting excited about school and make him think that getting to eat fish sticks is awesome. And, no I'm not sure he is understanding all of my hype, but I figure if he knows what I'm saying then maybe the power of suggestion will get him through the day.

I know he is having fun though. As soon as I leave the room, I stay and watch until he quits crying. Within a few minutes, he forgets that we have left and focuses on all the fun toys, what the other kids are doing and being the class favorite with the teacher. I know that all of this is "normal" but experiencing it for the first time is hard and quite the learning experience. Watching your child cry and be so upset but not able to do anything about it is a hard lesson but I can see the value.

I will update things about daycare as we get more in to it. But, the first month was "not that bad."