This week Lazy Baby has officially been in daycare for two months. Wow, it feels like much longer and much shorter at the same time. One thing that I wasn't warned about when becoming a mom was that time moves differently. Anyway, daycare, two months, right. At first, I'm pretty sure she hated every moment of every day there. For two weeks she'd scream when I'd drop her off and scream when I picked her up. Slowly she got used to it and now she seems to genuinely enjoy it (at least from what I can tell during the two small windows of time I'm there).
She has, of course, gotten sick a few times now. First with a cold, then with a rash, and finally a stomach bug. Those have been stressful, difficult times for my little family, but we've made it through. Honestly, the easiest was the stomach bug — even though it was, hands down, the grossest. I'm not 100% that it was a bug and not teething, because after two days the poops calmed down and her 8th tooth made its debut. Side note: how in the heck can teething cause diarrhea, vomiting, runny noses and all those other crazy symptoms? And why did no one tell me about it before hand?!
The sick times are a con of daycare, for sure. The only other con I've experienced (aside from LB's stuff accidentally going home with someone else twice now) is one of the women who works there grates on me real bad. I'm not going into it, because she has a stressful job that I never want to have to do myself and at the end of the day her opinions don't matter. If anything, it's all taught me to trust my mother's intuition more and more (because it has been right over this woman's "advice" a few times now).
The pros to daycare definitely outweigh the cons for us. LB has learned so much being there and around other kids, teachers and having a structured day. She even got bumped up to the older class early! She's safe and having a great time, which is a relief. Any time she's been ill, they've called to let me know and I like that. They do school pictures and I love that, too! I can just pay $25 and get a professional photo of my baby, yes, please! When Mr. LL or I get sick, we can take her to daycare and then go home and actually rest. Before, when my mom was watching her, we wouldn't really rest. We'd help my mom or let her go home and just deal with the baby while sick. We've actually planned to take off a few days from day jobs to celebrate our wedding anniversary during the day while LB is at daycare. We're calling it Daycare Dates.
School pictures! My heart just melts when I look at this photo!
The cost is more a con than a pro, but I suppose it's really just a necessary evil. I am very grateful that we found a decent daycare that we can afford and that my mom is helping us with the cost while she can. It's sad that child care is a privilege here, and without my mom's help it would be a privilege that we couldn't afford. Thankfully we are able to manage it right now and are trying to build up some funds for if/when my mom can no longer help us with this burden financially.
Well, that's really all for now. Just thought I'd give an update on how it's been with our daycare life these days. Let me know if you have any daycare stories in the comments!