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May 4, 2003
Day Care Change
Sunday night at 4PM we got the call. As soon as I saw my day care provider’s name, ‘J’, on the caller ID box, I knew it would be bad news, since she only calls me to cancel day care. Sure enough, her basement had flooded and day care was cancelled for the whole week, and possibly into next week. Now I don’t want to sound too heartlessly selfish here, but my first reaction was that I was pretty ticked off. Lately J has been canceling day care more and more often, for reasons that don’t seem entirely legitimate to me. One day she will call and say her daughter was sick but the next day she tells me her daughter had been up during the night and she was tired. Then she decided to take a week’s vacation. Originally she said she was having the whole upstairs redone and she needed to supervise the workers but then she said they weren’t coming after all (but she was still taking the week). Now I know that, like all employees, she gets her (paid) sick and vacation time, and so Jamie and I adjusted our schedules, I missed labs and he took long lunches, but this last phone call was more then I wanted to bare. And my mind was further made up by the simple fact that I had another option since her new day care center, that she was going to start in June, had the spot all ready for her. So that’s that and we are done with her.
It’s bittersweet, really. When we first started with J, we were very happy with her. She kept a clean home with a lot of toys, had a daughter only a month different from Ella, only had three children total (including her daughter) and seemed to work well with Ella’s needs. She had also been running a day care for over ten years so we figured she knew her stuff. And at first it seemed to be going well enough. Ella was young but stayed clean and dry and seemed happy enough to be going. Gradually, however, I have been growing less satisfied. I don’t feel she offered the right kind of structure that works best for a toddler. She relied on videos WAY too much, in my opinion. She didn’t take the children outside as much as I would have liked and she fed them almost continuously throughout the day, when I would have preferred more structured meal and snack times. She also just seemed to me like she really didn’t like her job or like her life very much. Her daughter really is a tough little kid, very needy and rough, and her husband and sons don’t seem to do anything around the house to help her at all.
I hope that people don’t get out of this that I would leave my daughter in a negligent environment. Like I said, these dissatisfactions surfaced over time, and I was always concerned about making any knee jerk reactions and having Ella needlessly go through a whole new adjustment process. The shift was a gradual one from being very happy with her services to having a few concerns to deciding to find another place for Ella. All the same, it is, in some sense, her first graduation. The end of an era. Sigh…
All the same, I am just so excited about this new day care. We took Ella twice this week for a few hours, once with me and once without, as part of their ‘orientation’. She seemed to really enjoy herself. She is going to be in the infant room over the summer and then move up to toddlers in September. She is the oldest in the infant room and probably would do better in the toddler room but this is where the space is. And really, it is great for her because she will have a better ratio of teachers and more flexibility of schedule in this room, which will be nice for her while she is adjusting to the new setting. Everyone there seems really nice though and there are three other children that are only a few months younger then Ella. Right now I am thinking I will have her go full time for the rest of May, while I am finishing up my classes, and then four days/ week for June and three days for July and August. I guess they adjust better when they go full time, but later, once she is used to the new place, I will take her out more so we can still spend some good time together this summer.
A trying week
Home with Ella all week has highlighted all of her, um, trying characteristics and it has been very hard to stay patient and understanding all the time. When I am well rested and patient and relaxed I can laugh at her sudden tantrums and frequent break downs and ruefully say “My, she must REALLY feel comfortable, safe, secure and loved with me in order to so freely express all these negative feelings” or “Boy is she learning to have a sense of self, She really has it down that she does not have to do or say or feel everything that mommy does” or “Gee, Ella, have you been reading the toddler manual again, you are just dead on with this testing behavior”. So I KNOW it is normal and a phase and that it means Ella is growing up and learning about herself. But there are times when I am tired or cranky or it just seems like nothing will make this child happy when I just wonder “What am I doing wrong?!?!” “Will this ever end?” or more often “How could I have handled that better.” I know the dangers of trying to be a child’s ‘friend’ rather then their ‘mother’ but I hate the thought of a growing, long lasting resentment forming or any lack of closeness.
First co-op sit
My babysitting co-op, that I discussed a few months ago, has been very slowly getting off the ground. I decided to orchestrate a sit for Ella based more on her timing then an actual need to get out, in order to have a fairly low stress test run. Two women and their daughter watched Ella (I had met one of the women at a couple of the meeting and their daughter, who was three). I am happy to report that things went very well with no big issues to report. Everyone was comfortable with the situation and they reported Ella was a doll. I do worry, though, that most people in this group are hoping to be able to lump their sits in as play dates and not be interesting in sitting in the evenings, which is when I am most interested in having ‘adult time’. All the same, I was very pleased with our first experience.
A few final notes:
Ella just loved to dress up. These days, it is not unusual for her to be found in her rain hat, her hospital robe, three strands of Mardi gras beads, and some of my high heeled shoes. It is just way too cute, I am going to use up all my film with the combinations she comes up with.
Raffi, who I mentioned in an earlier entry, is gradually taking over our house. After her love of his videotape, I found a cassette and a CD of his at a yard sale. I like these much better then the video since she doesn’t zone out as much so, as a result, I’ve been willing to play them more and now Ella doesn’t enter a room without asking for Raffi. Even when he isn’t playing some combination of the three of us seem to have his songs in our heads and are thus subconsciously singing him anyway. Ug.
Ella’s language is just incredible. I don’t even know all the words she knows anymore since it seems like she will parrot everything and all the time says new things to me that I had no idea she could say. One amazing thing she did the other day was count to ten, totally independently! This is particularly amazing since both Jamie and I usually only go as high as five with her. I guess she learned it from Sesame Street. She will also parrot the whole alphabet and sometimes will do two or three of the letters without us prompting. She is still talking mostly in single words but throws in a two-word phrase “Steve’s house” “Hi dada” “More apple” from time to time.
Well, I guess that’s all for now…
Thanks for reading!
Bonnie
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