Daycare

So, I stay home.  I never really quite know how to describe this situation, since I do WORK while I am at home, and I also STUDY while I'm at home.  But I'm not like, earning a paycheck, and my school work is part time, so I can't really claim to be a work-at-home mom or a full time student.  So, for lack of a better description, I just... stay home.  A lot.

It wasn't always this way.  Back in my former life, I was a school teacher.  And until the day I gave birth to my eldest daughter, I thought I would always be a working mom.  Instead, I became THAT MOM, curled up in the fetal position on my couch, the night before my dreaded return to work, sobbing about "how could I ever leave her?!"  It wasn't pretty.

I did go back to work however, and survived that for the second half of one school year and the entire next school year.  Upon finding out I was pregnant again (yes, for the second school year in a row, I was the pregnant teacher) we decided it was finally time for me to get to stay home.  I was THRILLED.

And I truly am thrilled to do it, most days.  MOST days.

And then there are days like today.

I put a call in to a local daycare center last week, because I need some very occasional, last minute childcare when I get called away to a birth.  I can't exactly tell a mama, "So sorry!  No babysitter, better cross your legs and wait it out until after my husband gets off work!"  This lovely daycare in town does drop in care (and only costs an arm and leg, I should add... this is where getting a paycheck would be useful) and sounds perfect for what I need - a safe, reliable place to drop my kids at the drop of a hat.

So, we went to visit the daycare this morning, with husband in tow so he would at the very least know its location if the situation occurs that I get called away in the middle of the night and he has to take the kids in the morning.  I was all kinds of nervous that my kids would commit some kind of  daycare faux pas, like coughing on someone or putting their stuff in the wrong cubby, or at the very worst, said something out loud like "I don't like it here!  I wanna go home!"  To try and set us up for a successful visit, I reallllly talked it up to Rory as we drove there.  "Rory, you're gonna love this place!  It's so cool!  It's like school, like where your friends Olivia and Savannah and Adrianna go to!" She acted pretty stoked about it, when I put it that way.  Except the part where she found out she wasn't going to get to ride the school bus like Olivia.  That was almost a mini meltdown.

Anyways, the visit went great.  Liberty was all kinds of smiley, Rory was all kinds of polite, and the whole place was all kinds of charming, with little kid sized everything.  In case you are thinking to yourself, "Has this chick never seen the inside of a daycare?", you would be correct.  Rory stayed with one of my friends at her house the whole time I worked, so she's never got the 5-star treatment of using a tiny potty or doing circle time.

As I said, the visit went great.  Until I told her it was time to leave.

She spent the rest of the day woefully exclaiming things like:
"I don't want to go to Hobby Lobby!  I wanna go back to that cool place!"
"I don't want tater tots!  I wanna go back and play with the toy vacuum!"
"I don't wanna nap in my tent!  I wanna nap on a mat with the other kids!"
"I don't wanna eat my snack in front of a movie!  I wanna go back to the cool place to eat a snack!"


Apparently I ruined her life by being a mostly stay-at-home mom.  :)