Successful 1st Day!

Lukas' first day of preschool at his new school went GREAT yesterday! He wasn't too chatty about his day, but he was eager to go back this morning and he was smiling when I picked him up yesterday afternoon, so that is enough to tell me he had a good day.

Carpool was a breeze - the assistant teacher (who he'd never met before) got him out of the car and he barely gave me a "bye mom" before running off with her to his class!  I was a little teary, but luckily I had the J man to keep me occupied all day.  (And while we're on the subject - it was so quiet with only one child at the house!  I didn't realize how used to the noise I had gotten.  I think Julian missed his big brother, but I also think he loved the one on one time with momma.)

When I picked Lukas up he was clearly tired - his voice was a little hoarse - he must've talked all day long!  He told me he had fun and that they had diggers on the playground.  He ate all his lunch and may or may not have napped (he kept changing his story on that one).  His teacher told me he's a great addition to the class, so all in all, I'm calling this a success!  We'll see how day 2 goes when I pick him up in a few hours...

Julian and I checked out a local daycare yesterday as it is looking like I'll begin working again next week.  The daycare did not live up to my standards and they didn't have any space for his age anyway, so that's off the list.  Which leads us to a nanny.  I just have very mixed emotions about a nanny.  On the one hand, I like that J will be in our house and will have one on one attention.  But on the other hand, I have to put my trust in a virtual stranger with my precious little guy.  How do you know who is genuinely good and will love your child and take care of him the way you intend?  How do you know they are not leaving him to cry for hours on end in his crib?  How do you know he is OK every day all day alone with one person?  I am just having serious issues wrapping my head around leaving him with a nanny.  At least with daycare there are multiple people checking in on your child and there is accountability at every corner.  With a nanny, you just have to trust.  I'm having a really hard time with that.

And speaking of J, he's calling my name....

Life on the Move: Coping with Change

Life on the Move: Coping with Change

Check out my article (link above) on 360 Parenting for some more thoughts on the move.

And for another quickie update: it's the night before Lukas starts his first day of preschool at his new school here in Macon.  I'm much more nervous than he is!!! He seems excited about making friends and seeing his new teacher again.  I'm a ball of nerves.  I found his Primrose backpack which has a bear on it and got all nervous asking the husband if it was ok. I think my exact words were "will the other kids make fun of him for having a bear on his bag."  Husband looked at me liked I'd lost it (note: I have) and said, "NO, there will probably be a handful who think the bear is super cool"!  I mean, he is 3 years old. It's a bear.  I'm an idiot.

I just worry how he'll do tomorrow.  It's all so new.  New school. New teacher. New friends. This school even has carpool, which is new for us - so I'll drive up and a teacher will take him out of the car.  They say the kids do best if you start carpool from day 1, but I'm freaking out about it. I KNOW he will be fine. I know he'll be great. My momma bear protective instincts are just raging. I just hope he loves it!

And lets not even talk about little man J.  I'm in the midst of trying to find care for him (he can't start at Lukas' school until he is 18 months old, which isn't until January).  So we're interviewing nannies and I'm going to check out a local daycare tomorrow.  While I'm nervous about Lukas starting somewhere new tomorrow, I'm not worried. I am, however, a wreck thinking about leaving Julian with a nanny or at a daycare that I'm not 125% comfortable with.  Unfortunately, Primrose set such a high standard that I know I'll have a hard time being comfortable with anyone or anywhere else until Julian can talk to me and tell me how his day was, which is a long way off given the fact that he is only 15 months old. I'm thinking a nanny cam may be in order if we end up going the nanny route.

But for now, here's hoping Lukas loves his new school!

Side Effects of Daycare

When people find out you're pregnant, after the initial questions: When are you due? How have you been feeling?  Are you finding out the sex?  Have you picked a name? I found that many people asked me if I was planning on returning to work.  After my response was yes, the next question that came was one I came to detest: What are you doing about childcare?  Or if they were more direct, the question was framed more like: So, you're getting a nanny, right?  Well as anyone who has read my blog before knows, no, I did not get a nanny.  When he was exactly 14 weeks old, Lukas started daycare.  As it would turn out, people are quite opinionated about daycare.  Especially older generations, as I've found they just don't seem to think kids should be sent to daycare.

I was a little nervous at first about daycare myself, especially since my childhood revolved around my mom  who stayed home with me and my brother.  Taking care of us was her career.  She was passionate about it and she's an amazing caregiver.  The closest I ever came to daycare was attending the after school program in elementary school for an hour or two until my older brother finished with school.

But for my child, I made the difficult decision to return to work as an attorney and "send him to daycare".  Gasp, I was going to have other women raising my child.  I know what some people think of this decision.   They are entitled to it.  But I am happy with my decision and my experience with daycare has had many pleasant surprises that I was not expecting.

(I should point out that Lukas is attending a new, in-town daycare/school and we pay a pretty penny for this care.  The cost rivals that of college tuition.  In fact, annually it costs more than what I paid for my law school tuition each year.  I realize that this fact alone sets my experience with daycare apart from many people who send their kids to "daycare".  Primrose is more of a "private school for babies", but in the end, Lukas is getting cared for during the day, so it's still "daycare".)

The first thing that I wasn't expecting from daycare was for the "strangers" who are taking care of him every day to become an extended part of our family.  His teachers and the administrators at Primrose spend more time with my son than most of my family.  They may not have the same kind of love for him that my family does, but they love him.  And we love them.  One of his two original teachers left a few months ago to start another job that allowed her more time with her young children, and I've missed her and was genuinely sad to see her go.  But we've stayed in touch (thanks to facebook) and have had one play date and another planned this weekend.  Another one of his teachers is leaving this Friday and she will be just as missed.  These women are such a huge part of my life and Lukas' life.  They are not strangers by any definition of the word.  They are amazing, patient and loving caregivers who I feel 100% confidence in caring for my son.

When I first went back to work, I felt like I was a horrible mother.  How could I possibly choose to return to work over staying at home devoting all of my time to raising my son?  There was a lot of doubt and we won't even talk about the guilt.  But over the past 8 months I've realized that I am a better mother because I work outside of the home.  I am fully present with Lukas when I am with him.  I devote all of my attention to him and whatever game we're playing, book we're reading or song we're singing.  I don't take the time I do spend with him for granted, and I think I would if I were not working.  I believe I would see taking care of him as another chore, another thing to do.  Instead, I really engage with him and cherish the time I am home with him in the mornings, evenings and weekends.  And they do more with him at baby school than I would at home - painting and drawing, reading lots of books, singing, dancing, learning sign language and gaining social skills by interacting daily with the other babies. I think he's getting the best of me as a mom and the best from daycare.  The combination is proving to work and so far he's an extremely happy baby, which is really all I could hope for at this point.

The last thing I wasn't expecting from daycare was making new friends.  I have had the joy and privilege of meeting some hilarious women in the other moms in Lukas' class.  It's nice to have other mothers who understand the frustrations of nursing and the questions about continuing to work.  These ladies know what I'm going through at any given time, be it juggling being a mom, working and being a wife; dealing with horrible diaper rash; projectile vomiting; not sleeping.  You name it, if it is baby related, they've likely experienced it.  I find that at the end of each work day I don't just look forward to picking up Lukas, I also have the added bonus of seeing friends.  The "boys club" as our boys have been dubbed, will all be together in the same class for at least another 6 months and I'm so glad because that means the moms will all get to be together for that long too.  It's not easy making new girlfriends, so I consider myself lucky to have met these women and be able to call them friends.

So the next time I'm pregnant and someone asks what I'm doing about childcare, I'm going to happily tell them that my baby will be going to daycare baby school at Primrose.

Picture in a picture

This is now sitting on my desk at work.  How adorable is this picture? 

It was waiting for me when I dropped Lukas off at daycare and makes me love his "school" even more. They send home so many cute pictures and projects. I've even re-started my Lukas scrapbook that I plan on filling with all the art projects he does at school and the hundreds of pictures I've been taking of him.  And I am even using my "good" camera more these days and will upload some of those pictures one of these days.

Ok, back to starring at my little king work.

The End of a Search

Well one of our searches has finally come to an end. Our childcare search has ended. And just in time. I go back to work on Monday. As of yesterday we had no concrete plan aside from having my mom fill in as the temporary nanny until we could find a permanent solution. And Mr. Cob's mom had even planned to come in from Chicago to serve as temp nanny #2. And both grandmas are still helping us out by watching Lukas over the next two weeks. But as of today, we now have permanent childcare set up to begin the middle of February.

I received a call this morning from my #1 choice for daycare letting us know that a spot had become available. I honestly started crying on the phone with the woman. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. The daycare is just two miles from my office so on slow days I can pop in during lunch to see him and get a baby hug from my little man. This helps soothe the pain of having to go back to work after spending the past 3 months with him every day all day. I have conflicting emotions about the transition. I have no doubt that tears will be shed on Monday. I anticipate crying most days next week. But I'm also tying to stay positive and am hoping for the best. And the one thing that is helping the most is knowing that I have choice. I can always change my mind if I go back to work and it's horrible, maybe we will eventually decide that it's better for our family for me to stay home. Who knows. Maybe I'll be happy going back to work and Lukas will thrive at daycare.

I'm just going to take it one day at a time. You can't always plan for how the future will turn out.

Who Will Watch Our Kid?

It's time to ramp up the Childcare Search.  Seeing as how my due date is in 109 days (thanks thebump.com) and my maternity leave is 12 weeks (84 days), we will need childcare in roughly 193 days (yay, math).  This still seems far off, but I'm getting nervous, very nervous. 

Until last week were were still only on one waiting list - The Canterbury School, which I wasn't psyched about after taking the tour.  The tour guide was 15-20 minutes late for our appointment, didn't have any handouts to give us because the printer was broken, promised to send us the handouts but never did, and was generally less than enthusiastic in her demeanor which didn't do much for "selling" the school to us.  I got the vibe that she didn't feel like she needed to impress us because she's well aware that supply does not meet demand for quality childcare in Atlanta, and that parents will take whatever school/daycare has a spot for them at the time.  But, she's partly right and we're keeping our name on the list.  The teachers seemed nice and the school is somewhat close to our house, so it wouldn't be a bad option. 

We then got our sh*t together and applied to the Frazer School, which I'm really excited about, even though I haven't toured the facilities or spoken with any of the staff/teachers.  I like the idea of inclusive education/care giving and think Lukas will benefit from being around all sorts of children.  We've also heard wonderful things about the school from Mr. Cob's co-worker, so it's my #1 choice right now.  Also, the Frazer School has part-time programs, so my mom could watch Lukas for 1-2 days a week if she's up for it.  We're on the waiting list, but we received a letter confirming receipt of our application that more or less said they're inundated with applications and will let us know if our number comes up.  Otherwise, they wish us well in our search.

Today I filled out and mailed in the pre-registration form for the new Primrose School opening up in Midtown this August.  Our name will be placed on their waiting list and we'll be notified if a spot is available for February.  The location is OK, but the price is high - $1340 per MONTH!  And they're only taking full time applications.  So it's not perfect, but it's brand new and I'm sure it would be fine.

And now I feel like I've hit a dead end.  There are some church daycares in the area that we could look into, and some other schools that aren't very clear about their application process.  But it seems with all these "schools", you apply, get put on a waiting list and then simply wait to be notified of an available spot.  So what happens if February rolls around and we don't get a spot anywhere?  We need a backup plan, which I guess is a nanny, but I don't even know how to begin that search.

I'm starting to feel overwhelmed.  Deep breathes.  In. Out. In. Out.  Sigh.

Search #2 - Childcare

The adventures in soon-to-be parenting continue.  Mr. Cob and I are in the midst of trying to find daycare for our little bun.  Yes, I know, I'm not due until November - another 23 weeks, and then I get 12 weeks of maternity leave, so we won't actually need childcare for another 35 weeks (I can add, yay math), i.e. the end of January/beginning of February (assuming the little one arrives "on time").  But since I've been public about my "condition", multiple people have told me to immediately begin our childcare search. 

Mr. Cob and I are both attorneys, and both put ourselves through law school, which means we have student loans (luckily UGA law is extremely reasonable and our loans aren't nearly as much as many other law school grads, but its still substantial debt, although good debt).  And we both have great jobs, that we like, so one of us quitting our job to stay at home with Baby S isn't really an option - we would have to sell our house and downsize, move to the suburbs, and completely change our standard of living.  I'm not saying this isn't an option forever - once Baby S gets here, I may totally change my mind and decide that continuing to work is not what I want to do, in which case we will reevaulate and go from there.  But for now, I feel very strongly about continuing my career (as does Mr. Cob) and I believe we can raise a well-adjusted, loved child and both be attorneys.  (This is my hope, anyway - stop smirking at me.)

So with that decision to both continue working, we need to find some childcare for Baby S.  The obvious two options are daycare/school or a nanny.  From what I've heard, nannies are more expensive than daycare, so for now we are focusing our search on daycares - although, from the looks of it, decent daycares start at around $1000/month, so its not cheap.  Ideally, I'd really love to find another couple of working moms who live close by and do a nanny-share, but until I can manifest that perfect scenerio, we're getting our name on waitlists at as many daycares as possible and hoping for the best.

Today we are going to tour the Canterbury School in Morningside.  It has been providing childcare to Atlanta residents since 1954, so it has to be doing something right.  Their mission is:

Canterbury School is dedicated to providing a superior quality early childhood education to our young children. Canterbury’s emphasis is on providing small class sizes, intellectual stimulation coordinated with child’s play, child-centered activities based on experimentation with materials of the child’s own choosing, and a nurturing environment that promotes self confidence, respect for self and others, and life-long learning.

We are already on their waitlist, so hopefully we like it.  We shall see.

Other schools we'll be looking at are The Phoneix School in Oakhurst, the Frazier Center (which is inclusive childcare for children with disabilities and children without disabilities, which we've heard is a great school - also, given that Mr. Cob grew up in a school system of inclusion, we thought this would be a great option) and Primrose Academy - and any other suggestions anyone may have.  So bring on the suggestions!  Or let me know if you know of a nanny wanting to take on a new baby in February!

So here's to another search - hopefully it goes better than our church search...which we kind of abandoned for a bit...oops.