ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

I just registered our unborn child for daycare. Sigh.

Good move

Soul destroying but good

you weren't gonna need that soul anyway were ya?

The whole process ended up being easier than I thought it would be. All the places with the super long wait lists were really way out of our price range. We just went to the closest, cheap neighborhood and found a place there. Actually, the first we looked at.

It's very cheerful and clean and they will do 3 or 4 days/week, which we might be able to swing depending on how impossible easy it is to work from home with a baby in the house. What really won me over was watching the teachers in the young toddler's class, who all exuded good natured patience and kindness with these crazy ass toddlers.

Another place we looked at, by contrast, I actually saw the teachers speak sharply to two or three different kids during a 30 minute visit. Also they had a list of religious aphorisms posted on the back of the bathroom door (pro tip: be pregnant and ask to pee when you are touring daycares to get a behind the scenes look at how clean the places actually are), the first of which was something like "Fear of God is the foundation for all learning." Which, my own rampant atheism aside, I don't think fear should be the foundation of any learning.

Anyway, some of the expensive daycare centers touted Spanish classes for babies, so I feel like we're getting an extra good deal sending the kid to a daycare where the owners and staff all speak Spanish anyway.

Yeesh, the one you decided against sounds awful. Good move.

creepy or cute?
http://www.boredpanda.org/wengenn-in-wonderland-sioin-queenie-liao/

do they knock that kid out with nyquil or what

also seems like this woman did it first
https://www.google.com/search?q=mila%27s+daydreams&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=q6pqUo5wpNLYBdXygIgC&sqi=2&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1333&bih=608

If you've ever been asked this question, you'll appreciate it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

Oh screaming baby none of us are having any fun if that helps

Xp: we researched that question earlier in the summer. I'm a little pissed at myself for not finding a way to monetize it, I guess. 3 year old loves it.

My daughter's favorite animal is the fox. She always giggles when she sees the fox picture and says "cute!"

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/10/25/information_test_written_to_assess_children_in_1930.html

Is the Atlantic Ocean fire, land, paper or water?

I put this song up against anything on pop radio right now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxMrtK-kYnE

Plus K will ONLY let us brush her teeth while watching it.

Making birthday cakes is fucking hard.

Oh god I totally failed at icing Evie's cake this year and ended up tossing it in the dumpster and buying one at the bakery literally an hour before her party. Big globs of gross melting pink icing everywhere.

Cake actually ended up tasting great (Smitten Kitchen recipe) but it was a stupid amount of work and icing is a bitch.

Smitten Kitchen resides are often delicious and a huge PIA.

To be honest I was reasonably okay with the whole thing until I had to sift 3 3/4 cups powdered sugar to make the buttercream icing. That was the point where I was like okay this is bullshit I have better things to do with my time. Adding the tinting, icing and lettering and I'm like I am never doing this again.

There's a lot of stuff in baking and cooking that seems to me like it can only be accomplished in the allotted time once you've done it like 50 times before.

only learnt this after years of frustration but i found it's a lot easier to prep the items before you start (if you can), sift flours, melt butter, etc, that way the time you take is mostly mixing + cooking. less stressful that way.

Ugh. I need a personal chef.

yeah it aint for everybody :)

I'm like the worst prepper ever. Pretty much just add 50-100% to the time a recipe lists when I cook it because of how long my prep takes.

Yeah I prepped the cake and while that was cooling I did the icing prep, but it didn't matter the order because sifting that much powder sugar was an insane pain no matter what order I did it in.

Babies first day of daycare tomorrow. House full of bummed out.

;_;

daycare seems like a bad thing until you actually see the staff in action and you realize they do a great job (assuming you found a good place)

Oh no, I get that, but k is having to leave the kid for the first time, so it's pretty rough for her - rationally we are both down with the situation, and thx to close parents and my weird ass schedule there's going to lots of quality fan time as well, but first time separation is a tough thing. I was pretty bummed when I had to go back to work, and that was 11 weeks ago.

Basically I am not sad for the kid, he's probably going to have a pretty awesome time, I'm sad/sympathetic for her.

yeah it's a rough first week but I have only had great experiences with daycare and really came to appreciate the work they do wish they got paid a lot more

Yeah it's easy to bitch abt the cost of daycare until you do the math and realize that soon enough you will be paying some rando babysitting high school kid more per hour to ignore your kid and watch tv in your house.

Not of course that that has stopped me from doing so, probably somewhere upthread

we're increasingly thinking daycare when she's old enough for the good one. All the inconsistency seems like a lot of strain on her, and on us too -- one day the babysitter comes, another day I take her on the subway, another day her grandma comes over. I think knowing what to expect would make her less anxious.

She's actually come to understand that Saturday is the day Mom and dad don't go to work, which is kind of sweet. She doesn't actually understand when it falls in the week, but when she wakes up and we're both there, she says "Shabbat" (Saturday).

Plus daycare involves licensing, training, and there are more sets of eyes on your kids and on the people watching your kids. With a nanny you never really know what you're getting. We already had one bad experience.

I think it's probably good for the kids to be around other kids, too. I mean, what do I know. We're putting our kid in daycare because that's our only option financially, but that seemed like a good benefit.

Hank Sr was sick last week. I was taking Beeps in there anyway, and stopped in his classroom to talk to his teacher. Couldn't get out without four members of the Lollipop Guild cornering me and asking about how he was doing.

"Does he have a fever?"
"Did he go to the doctor?"
"Did he go to the hospital?"
"My great-great-great grandfather died at the hospital and now lives with Jesus."

I told H that Ethan was asking about him, and he replied, "no, no. Wyatt's my friend."

Oh man, I love how they can only have one friend. Sorta like "I don't love you. I love mommy" or whatever.

there can be only one

must be his Scottish ancestry

I hope there's no beheading involved.

kid dropped off, feeling a lot better about the whole thing. of course this morning he wouldn't take a bottle at first no matter what, kept spitting it out or choking on it or whatever which led to me having some vague paranoid fantasy that he didn't like reheated milk, or it was too old and had gone bad, or was freezerburned or like 15 other panic strategies - after which I realized that we hadn't bottle fed him for about a week and was prob just bottle confused, tried again and bingo. im a pretty levelheaded calm dude but wow, kid problems are a path to pure freakout mode sometimes.

when we first visited the daycare it was naptime in the infant room (lights dimmed, a row of cribs, a bunch of people silently wandering around the room) so i have been dreading the idea that it was just basically a turning babies into money factory. today everything was bright and exciting, people talking to infants like people, michael just staring around and chattering. feel so much better about this whole thing now. also the kid to handler ratio is pretty good i think, 3 caregivers for 6 infants. whew. what a morning.

must be his Scottish ancestry

I forgot to tell you that Officer Phil – this big 50something muscled-up bald ex-cop with a Santa Claus beard who works security for the daycare – was dressed up as Braveheart/William Wallace on Halloween. Blue paint, kilt, mace and everything.

I asked Beeps if she knew what he was and her reply was "a bagpipe player."

A BAGPIPE PLAYER????

hahah

One thing that's tough about the inconsistency of our arrangement is...the inconsistency. E.g. the babysitter gives K her regularly scheduled meals and snacks, just like we do. But her grandma keeps telling us that K "ate constantly today," which basically means grandma FED her constantly, on demand, instead of keeping a schedule. She has this problem with other things too, for example, she once suddenly got into this panic about videos and sent me all these articles about why videos are bad for your child's brain or whatever and she texted me "We have to take video completely out of her routine. All she wants to do is watch it all day." Well the thing is, when K wants to watch videos all day with us, we use a technique known as "no" and don't give in just because she whines.

why does babby always play video games??? itisamystery.gif