A Whole New Day(care)

Yesterday, Conor started the new daycare.  Surprising, *I* was the one who cried!  I know that daycare is OK for our family and that I’m not abandoning my child.  But the overpowering feelings of starting somewhere new and putting him in the Big Boy class was just more than I could take after 3 weeks of having him at home.

And yes, those of you who have recommended a nanny are right.  It’s so much better than daycare.  There’s no comparison:  having 1 on 1 attention in your home versus a group setting elsewhere.  However, we being poor academics and non-profit employees cannot afford this country’s cheapest nannies, much less ones who are going to have training on early childhood education. 

So, back to the new place:

Conor did really well.  He didn’t cry at all when I left, although I as I have admitted did.  I also stopped by the director’s office and then sneaked back by the room at which point I saw that the lead teacher had already swooped up Conor in her arms and was showing him around the room and introducing him to the children.

My heard did skip a beat when 20 minutes later I got a call from the daycare.  But it was all good news:  after telling her that Conor had never eaten with a spoon, she told me that at that exact moment, he had yogurt on his spoon and it was actually making it to his mouth.  He apparently saw the other children doing it and figured out he could do it, too.  (One teacher shared that toilet training moves along the same logic with the kids, too)

And of course, there are the food issues which are more frightening for me than for Conor.  (Will he feel bad he’s not eating what the other kids will eating???  Will the teachers think we are incredibly high maintenance???)   So far, the answer is No to both issues.  They are giving us a menu before each week so we can pick and choose what we want.  Yesterday he ate most of their food except for the lunch entrée and the afternoon snack.  And when they served him his own afternoon snack (olives and a mini-bagel half), the other children were very interested in what he was eating.  (Or as the teacher said , the “vultures” were hovering around his food!) 

And even more surprising, we’ve already met the parents of one of the children in our class.  They are neighbors and we spent a good deal of time talking with them last night.  They seem very nice.

So it seems good.  It seems really good.  We think we’ve found a good solution for the next year for our little bugger. 

Off to a hellish day of meetings at school.  

7:30:56 AM