A New Daycare Adventure

- April 08, 2015

Times Are Changing

A while back I wrote about Jellybean's first daycare experience and how difficult it was for me to leave him there for the first time. I cried and cried in my car after! And it continued to be difficult for the several days that followed. There were plenty of times I would just go over there to visit him because I missed him during the workday. Leaving your kid, especially your first kid, alone and in the hands of caregivers you hardly know requires A LOT of trust. Fortunately, Jellybean has had a wonderful experience at daycare. He's socializing well, learned how to take a bottle, and those ladies LOVE him to no end.

A few weeks ago, right before we hopped on a plane to the Pacific Northwest, Jellybean spent his last day in the baby room. It took me by surprise but that day was just as hard as the first day in that room! Had it been a year already? You mean to tell me when I come back from my vacation my kid will be in a ONE YEAR OLD ROOM? When did my baby grow up??! I'm not ready for this! I picked him up early that day and he was sitting at the table eating lunch. We came a long way from that first day of him just lying there staring at a colorful mobile and now to sitting at a table feeding himself beef stew and apple sauce! The ladies in that room met him when he was just 8 weeks old and spent the year watching him grow into the delightful and silly personality he is now. We all had tears in our eyes as we said our goodbyes. Yeah sure, Jellybean would just be down the hall, but they discourage previous caregivers from visiting the babies because it could affect their transition to the new room. I can't imagine spending all that time helping raise a baby to a toddler and then just cutting it off cold turkey like that! And seeing the mutual tears in their eyes solidified my belief that my kiddo had been in good hands and with caregivers that truly had his best interests at heart. I was definitely taken aback by how sad I was that last day in the baby room. Partly because I didn't want things to change and partly because I was realizing just how quickly my BABY is growing.

Today, our first day back from vacation, I dropped Jellybean off at daycare and took him straight to the one year old room. Holy cow what a shocker that was! First of all, I don't have to wear booties to cover my dirty shoes because these kids aren't exactly crawling around the room anymore. Second, I didn't have to wake up extra early to make bottles (win!). Third....my little man was the smallest person in the room! He went from the biggest to the smallest in the blink of an eye. To me, he's grown so fast and is HUGE, but when I saw him in that room as the little one, my heart melted for a moment. He's so TINY! I put him next to the toys and other kids and went to put away his diapers, blanket, and other things he'd be needing in the new room. When I went back to check on him, he was still standing in the same spot, not playing with toys, looking extremely apprehensive about the new environment! So then my heart went from melting to breaking over and over again. I have never seen my little boy look nervous about anything. He's always been the do first think later kind of baby. But I think the new environment was a little too much for him and he wanted to test the waters a little bit.

As a mom, I never want my kiddo to feel scared or nervous. I never want to look at him as he watches the other kids play not sure where he fits in exactly and how to join them. I want to shelter him and keep him from feeling anything but warm and fuzzy! But then.....if I really did that, what kind of kid would I be raising? I'm not about to raise a soft marshmallow of a boy here! I know that these new situations will make him more resilient and help make him more social. He's going to be a military brat, he needs to learn how to adapt to constant change. And I guess as he learns to develop those skills, I have to learn to stay back and let him. I know that in the days and weeks to come, he'll get more comfortable in the new room and we'll once again be in a routine that we're comfortable in. Just getting there is going to be tough, probably more so on mom than Jellybean.

Those days when he couldn't roll over yet....

Sitting up at the table impatiently waiting for food!

I put him in this Mommy loves me onesie to r mind him that even though I was dropping him off at daycare, I still love him! That first day was definitely rough.