thing three

(post script - this is a colossally long post.  i apologize.  but once i started typing, my blood pressure went back up.)

as you all know, i looked long and hard to find a daycare at which i was comfortable leaving Kitten.  and for the last six months, it's been a blessing.  but recently the daycare has been undergoing some changes which affected Kitten's care in a way which rapidly rose to the level of unacceptable.

i firmly believe that finding a good daycare has nothing to do with the facility itself, or the toys, or the playground equipment, or how expensive it is, or how well-decorated.  and really, even the directors of the facility take a back seat to the most important thing: the teacher who is in the room with my daughter all day.

the original infant room teacher left the daycare about one month after Kitten started there.  i was upset about it.  the teacher who moved up into the lead teacher position, Miss J, was young and i was worried that she wouldn't be able to handle the chaos of an infant room.  

it took a few weeks, but Miss J really got things into shape.  i became very happy with the way the infant room was running.  Kitten became very bonded to Miss J, and it was apparent that she was getting really good care.  Miss J was there when i dropped Kitten off in the morning, and she was there when i picked her up.  continuity of care is so important for young children, so having the same teacher in the room all day was crucial to me.  Kitten was consistently happy, well fed, dry, and clean.  i could tell when i picked her up every day that things were going well - and Miss J and i got along perfectly.  Kitten was happy as a clam every single afternoon.

unfortunately, the daycare never put any real effort into finding a steady second teacher for the room to assist Miss J.  there were a couple of girls who were there part of the time that i really liked - and a couple more who i really didn't care for.

further, despite Miss J's efforts, there were some things about the infant room that really needed to be changed.  keep in mind this was a brand-new facility developing brand-new policies, so when "parent survey" time came around i sat down and took the time to write a long suggestion letter.  the letter resulted in a call from an attorney who worked for the off-site owner.  we had a very good and productive conversation--but none of the changes we discussed ever materialized.  for instance, i felt strongly that the infant room needed to adopt a "no shoes" policy, as it was the only facility i had ever visited that permitted shoes in the infant room.  daily sheets needed to be two-way so that parents filled out information in the morning, because i didn't feel like the information in my thirty-second verbal run-down (4oz bottle at 6am, don't give her any tylenol until after 9am, she had a fussy night and will need a longer nap, etc.) sufficiently made it to the caregivers.  stuff like that.  i even offered to have my sister (who is the infant teacher/director extraordinaire with a degree in early childhood education and all the certifications you could ask for) come in and consult for a day or two for FREE.  they wanted to - but never followed through.

Miss J was so great, though, that i got over it, even though i remained a little annoyed.

then, two weeks ago, Miss J was out for two days in a row.  the first day i did not recognize any of the women in the infant room when i dropped off Kitten, and when i picked her up i could tell that she was out of sorts.

the second day i again did not recognize any of the women in the infant room, and i swear to god something inside me told me to not leave her.  i ignored it but promised to pick her up extra early.  

when i got there at 3:00 p.m., i walked into the room to see her standing on the floor with her pacifier (she is not permitted to have a pacifier except at naptime), holding onto a chair, red-faced and distraught.  the room was complete chaos, an utter mess, babies crying everywhere.  i picked her up feeling like a HORRIBLE mother for having left her.  i walked across the room and picked her blanket up from the floor (why was it there?) and put it in her crib, which is next to her cubby.  i looked in her cubby and realized that BOTH of her bottles were completely dry - she had not been given a bottle ALL DAY.  i picked up her daily sheet and she had NO BOTTLES and NO DIAPER CHANGES written down for the ENTIRE DAY.  her diaper was soaked.  she was traumatized. i was LIVID.

one of the secondary teachers that i like, Miss K, had just come into the room after getting out of class (she's in college) and she was frantically running around the room doing damage control while the two strange women kind of lurked around not doing anything productive.  Miss K apologized profusely, but i know it wasn't her fault--she'd barely walked through the door herself.  Miss K told me that the strange women reported that Kitten was crying all day, every time they'd set her down.

PERHAPS BECAUSE SHE WAS STARVING, YOU DOLTS????

i left the daycare and took Kitten straight home.  she was hysterical by the time we pulled into the driveway.  she took a giant bottle, a container of bananas, and a double-size bowl of oatmeal before she would calm down.  i cried.

and then i called the director.  of course she apologized and promised to go to the infant room right away and straighten it out, but i didn't feel any better.  i cuddled with Kitten all evening, even after she was fed and happy and was squirming to be out of my arms.

i vowed that the next day, if Miss J wasn't back, i wasn't leaving Kitten there - and thank GOD she was.  we had a LONG talk and Kitten was super happy to see her teacher.  

that afternoon Miss J and i had another long talk, and she confided that she was putting in her notice that day because the administration was too chaotic and she couldn't get them to support her or to hire any consistent assistance for her.

AHHHHHH.

so i put in my notice, too, and made immediate arrangements for Kitten to start attending a home daycare in the fall, and to stay with my sister for the rest of the summer.

and THEN, the next day, the off-site director called me and begged me to reconsider.  apparently they had already decided to terminate the on-site directors and are planning huge changes to the center, but these things hadn't been made public to the employees or parents yet.

i feel badly because i am invested in this center, and i wanted to see it grow and succeed.  as ya'll know, i spent a TON of time choosing the center that felt right for Kitten.  and there are still many teachers there who i trust greatly - but unfortunately, none of them are in the infant room full-time.

what's more, Princess is attending summer camp there, to great success. she is happy with her teachers and has had wonderful consistency of care (like i said--it's all about the teachers in the room).

i spoke at length with the off-site attorney, and wavered for a few days.  ultimately i decided to go ahead and keep Kitten out of the center, for now.  she will continue with my sister for the rest of the summer, and Princess will continue in their summer camp as long as she's happy.  

and in the fall, i have promised to come back to the center to meet the new director and new infant teacher and see what changes they've made, and reconsider Kitten's placement.  it's entirely possible that the new staff will be wonderful - but i won't allow Kitten to be a guinea pig in the midst of all that change.

not to mention that i had to put down a $400 deposit at the home daycare toward Kitten's fall enrollment.  the home daycare is the same center that i originally almost placed Kitten in, but i didn't at the time because the home daycare closes at 5:00 p.m. sharp and i was worried that would be problematic - but now i know it's workable.  the home daycare has a WONDERFUL curriculum and is terribly organized and creative.  the woman has one employee and keeps mostly teacher's kids, which is why she closes so early.  it's clear that she's put a huge amount of time and effort into developing her program over the last 30 years.  she keeps only children up to 5 years old, and funnels them directly into the local pre-k program.  it's much more of a tiny little private school than a daycare, and i have high hopes that it will work for us.

but who knows? the risk of a home daycare is, of course, that there is only one person in charge, and if you and that one person don't get along, there's no one else to go to.  and the woman does seem quite, ahem, assertive--but i'm never going to fault a woman for that!

wish us luck.

the sun is but a morning star.

-henry david thoreau, walden

at 5:51 a.m. this morning, like every saturday morning, when i heard the first stirrings from Kitten's crib i groaned to myself and silently begged her to sleep for just a few more minutes. it's hard getting up at that hour every single day.  which is why i find myself going to bed at 8:30 p.m. on a friday night.  shocking, even to me.

but like every other saturday morning, i dragged myself out of bed leaving a sleeping J behind, picked Kitten up from her crib, and took her into the living room to start our day.

by 6:30, after my english muffin and cup of coffee has kicked in and Kitten has been changed and fed a bottle, the world looks considerably brighter (both literally and figuratively), and i begin to be thankful for this time that i have with her each week, those unrushed hours between sunrise and 9:30 a.m. when aislinn goes down for her nap and J and Princess wake up and the making of blueberry pancakes or omelets begins - those in-between hours with the smell of coffee and morning air coming in through the back door screen, the sound of crosby, stills, nash, and young coming through the infinity speakers that my dad bought me in high school (lesson: you must always, always have quality speakers) and Kitten happily babbling, just the two of us.

here's a snippet of this morning, complete with dirty onesie (she played on the patio while i watered the plants and we rescued a caterpillar from death at the beaks of the birds nesting there - or at the hands of aislinn, who seriously almost ate it before i saw it).

(sorry for the formatting problem where the video window runs off the right margin; click on the video to take you straight to youtube if you want to see the whole screen.)

wherein i reduce my life to bullet points because i don't have time to post in full sentences

• summertime starts next week!
• repainted the very large guest bedroom and are moving Princess out of her small bedroom into it next week while she's at her mom's as a start-of-the-summer surprise
• new bedspread, rugs, lamps, paint, curtains whole new 1st-grader look: no more pale pink princess, lots of bold purple, pink, blue, orange, and lime green; J doesn't see the big deal--obviously he was never a seven year old girl
• Princess is going to summer camp at Kitten's daycare - SO looking forward to dropping them off at the same place each morning
• trying to make summer plans, gave Princess the choice of visiting any state contingent to oklahoma, she picked kansas - what's in kansas?? - we convinced her to do arkansas; will probably go to branson 2 nights then eureka springs 2 nights - suggestions welcome
• annual lake trip with my family coming up in a few weeks
• Kitten's 9 month check-up is next week - NO VACCINATIONS THIS TIME so don't have to worry about that for another three months
• J blew out his knee last sunday (kneeling in front of the fridge to check out what kinds of beer we had after helping my sister and her husband remodel all day) which ended us up at the ER; we've consulted with ortho and had an MRI today, check-up next thursday will reveal whether he'll need surgery to repair what is probably a torn ligament
• work is crazy, hectic, miserable, annoying, and makes me clench my jaw, but i still wouldn't trade the flexibility that having my own practice gives me for anything, because you can't put a price on being able to skip out of the office immediately without having to make up the billables over the weekend when you get a call about a sick kid
• Kitten and Princess are complete opposites, i can already tell - Princess is very cautious, "wait and watch" type of girl; Kitten sees it, wants it, and is INTO it in 0.395 seconds
• southcrest hospital ER had us in and out in 1 hour - impressive for the second ER visit of my life
• my first visit: hillcrest, 10p.m., friday night, handful of friends, accident (not mine) with a bottle of spiced rum, a new glass pitcher from pier one freshly washed in hot water, and an ice maker in the dorms
• Kitten update: favorite baby foods: peas (yeck), cherry applesauce; least favorite: bananas, squash; pulling up and sitting down proficiently, moves from object to object (couch to coffee table), will be walking in no time; says "gaga," "yaya," "baba," and a little "mama" and "dada," but doesn't yet assign meanings to anything
• my sister and her husband are still remodeling their house and it is going to look amazing when it's finished
• my sister and her husband also adopted a new dog, lexie, who is like a long-lost twin to their yellow lab maggie
• if you see my sister or her husband be nice to them because their plate is FULL and they can't really speak in full sentences right now
• Kitten's still sleeping in the pack and play in our bedroom; after we finish Princess's room i'm going to actually dec-or-ate Kitten's room with the goal of having her sleeping in there by her birthday in august - we can't have her dreaming in anything less than a well-appointed bedroom, can we?  i've picked out the pottery barn kids "brooke" bedding pattern and hopefully will be able to buy it before they discontinue it
• made homemade chicken fried rice for dinner tonight and it is SO much better than the stuff from Asian Chef down the street
• and finally, congratulations to my friend jennifer taylor who just found out she's having a GIRL!!!!! to become a little sibling to her son blayne.  welcome to club pink.  i know you're thrilled.

she get it from her momma

1980

2008

the weekend

Kitten and i went to bristow last week.  we spent the afternoon with my grandma ("gg" to Kitten).  it was a beautiful afternoon so we sat on the front porch to avoid the construction dust from grandma's kitchen remodeling project.

[click for bigger]

i have this same picture of me and grandma when i was a toddler.  hopefully i can find it and scan it.  oh, and look at grandma's monster azalea behind her - it's taller than she is.  and there's a crepe myrtle off to the right that's taller than the house.  why can't i get my plants to grow like that???

we spent the night at mom's house, where grandma gave a bottle to Kitten for the first time.

^mom has better posture than me.^

we ate boiled shrimp, sliced avocado, kalamata olives, grapes, sliced mozzarella and a baguette with olive oil for dipping.  i love love love the way that mom and stepdad eat.

thursday night was the much-anticipated night out.  J and i went to see conor oberst and jenny lewis at cain's.  my sister and mom came over to watch Princess and Kitten while we were gone.  i think i showed my sister where the breast milk is stored in the fridge three times before we left.  and i had a huge lump in my throat.  we had a great time, even though at one point J took my phone away from me because i wouldn't stop texting my sister to check on Kitten.

here Kitten and J nap before we left:

friday night jessalynn and matt came over for dinner.  J and i are just getting into the swing of entertaining con bebbe.  apparently Kitten doesn't really care if we're in the middle of dinner when she loses her pacifier.

jess and i have been friends since the dawn of time.  or, like, 1984.  same thing, really.  her parents and my parents would get together on saturday nights when we were little.  they'd play trivial pursuit and drink corona and crown (not together - i guess that should say corona or crown) in the kitchen while jess, my sister and i watched saturday night live until we'd get caught and mom would turn it off and direct us back to the barbies.

matt, jess, J, and i played cards at the kitchen table, drank a bottle of pinot noir, and watched the daily show while Kitten slept.

some things never change.

bottle feeding

well, Kitten had her first bottle tonight.  *tear*  but it's a good thing.  now i know that if i have to be away from her it will be okay.  not great, but okay.  and she downed that bottle in what has to be record time.  J gave it to her (i don't want her to learn to take a bottle from me), and at first she was like, "no! no! that's not what i want!  angry baby noises! red face! red face!"  but then when she realized she could drink from it - oh, man.  gulpgulpgulp and she passed right out.

i'll say it for the first of 100,000 times over the next eighteen years: she's growing up so fast.

um, so it's tuesday

and that's about all i've got.  maternity leave is blissful.  and i've been holding off on posting because i feel like i can't post without new pictures, so i had planned to do a photo shoot with the little one this afternoon but she seems to be interested in other things.  like napping.  and Napping.  also, nappinG.

we had her 2.5 week checkup yesterday and she's doing beautifully.  after getting down to a low weight of 6lbs even, eleven days later she's up to 7lbs 9oz, which according to the pediatrician is about an ounce a day.  i'm not going to check his math.  the whole 12-oz-in-a-lb thing totally throws me off because my feeble mind can only think in tens.  at any rate, the pediatrician proclaimed that to be "terrific weight gain," and we don't have to go back again until she's two months old.

between now and then i've got to get down to business and figure out what kind of vaccination schedule i'm going to do.  i've pretty much decided i'm going to do the bare minimum and decline what i think are unnecessary or unnecessarily risky vaccines, so now i have to figure out which vaccines fall into which category.  vaccines are a great concept, but i've seen vaccine injuries first-hand and i'm not going to expose her to any risk that isn't very, very well warranted.  i mean, it's not like when i was a kid and you got your dip/tet and were done with it - they've got a vaccine for EVERYTHING now, and they're not all so well-researched IMHO.  so we'll only be vaccinating for serious illnesses and not everylittlething. 

oh, and the nurse at the pediatrician's office keeps mispronouncing her name.  write it on her chart!  it is extraordinarily annoying and also somewhat worrisome to me.  i think we chose a beautiful name for our daughter spelled in the traditional way, but i genuinely hope we haven't saddled her with a lifetime of American mispronunciation.

Kitten *is* beginning to settle into a pretty regular schedule of waking up to feed about every 2 hours, give or take thirty minutes.  i'm breastfeeding her on demand, so this gets a little exhausting, particularly between approximately midnight and six a.m.  i have never seen so many consecutive sunrises in my life.  in fact, i've probably never seen ANY consecutive sunrises in my life, because in my previous life if i was up THAT early, then the next day you could guarantee i'd be sleeping in.  so in order to maintain my sanity i have *not* been looking at the clock the last few days because i really don't want to know how much sleep i'm [not] getting.  it's not like there's anything i can do to remedy the situation, anyway.  thank god for naps.  naps are goooood.

i haven't started pumping yet, nor have i introduced her to a bottle, because i wanted to prolong both of those things for as long as possible.  but last night J pointed out that next thursday (her one-month birthday), we have tickets to see conor oberst and jenny lewis at the cain's.  we bought these tickets when i was 7 or 8 months pregnant and i was *so* excited about it at the time, thinking, oh, she'll be a month old by then and i'll be pumping, i can leave her for a couple of hours and get out of the house, it will be good.  but when J mentioned last night, we need to line up a sitter for next thursday for Princess... and Kitten, my heart about dropped out of my chest.  noooooooo!    

it's not that i don't have a cadre of sitters who i trust and who are clamoring at a chance to watch her (hi mom! hi sis! you guys work this out between yourselves!).  and it's not like i haven't stolen away here and there while she's been napping to run to the grocery store or do whatever errand.  but the idea of having to get her used to a bottle in the next week and then actually leave her with someone and she might wake up while i'm gone and be fussy and no one knows how to take care of her like i do she needs me!  it's all a total new-mom cliche, but that's not stopping it from putting a great big lump in my throat as i type this.

so that's what's going on in our little world.  i'll be transitioning back into work around the first of october, which is only two weeks away, which is crazy fast, but that's the bed i made for myself when i took maternity leave early before she was born.  i have done plenty of beating myself up about that (in fact, i was beating myself up about it as i was doing it), but the bottom line is that when i think about how i felt physically around that time, it was my only choice.  i had to do it for my health and sanity, so i will make do with the rest of my leave, be thankful that J has several weeks of leave to stay home with her once i go back, and the rest will work itself out.  especially since mom and my sister are both teachers, and the public school system has such beautifully liberal winter break schedules, so there will be quite a few days between now and the end of the year when we'll be able to keep her out of daycare.  and also i won't be full-time right away. 

so that's all for now.  chance of pictures later: 63%.

life as three

well, i'm not as sleep deprived as i thought i would be.  the first week was hard, there were some tears, but it gets better every night.  Kitten is eating more each feeding, which means more time between feedings, which means more sleep!  she will even go for 4 hours if she's comfortable, after which point i have to wake her up to eat.  

she does not like her bassinet, however, and won't sleep in it for more than 45 minutes at a stretch, so she keeps ending up in bed with me.  and NO lectures about co-sleeping.  i've already heard it from my cares-for-infants-for-a-living sister, who has been my go-to person on all things baby care:

me: "is co-sleeping really that bad?"  

erin: [prolonged blank stare] "no."  [long pause]  "okay, now do you want to know what i really think?

we've even had some successful outings with Kitten.  mostly to lowe's for home improvement items because J and i are utterly insane and decided to put our house on the market to see if we get any bites.  we are quickly outgrowing this house.  we are in no rush to move, but if the right buyer comes along we'll be happy to oblige.  especially since there seems to be a number of homes on the market right now that fit what we're looking for, so i feel confident that the right one will be waiting for us when it's time.

but that also means that alllllll those home improvement projects we've been meaning to do for forever must be finished before the realtor comes to take pictures for the listing later this week.  ack!  

this house was a "flipper" when J bought it in 2002, and previously we had installed new:

• privacy fence
• (energy efficient) heating & air
• (low-flow) toilets
• countertops and plumbing fixtures in the kitchen
• (energy efficient) windows and doors
• (energy efficient) light fixtures in the hallway, dining room, and kitchen
• painted the siding outside (grey-beige with white trim)
• put in a vegetable garden, and
• tore down this awful uninsulated carpeted half-room in the garage and turned it back into, well, the garage.  

that sounds like a lot, but it was stretched out over three years.

in the last three days we:

• replaced the bathroom sinks, plumbing fixtures, and light fixtures
• laid new bathroom floors
• painted the bathrooms and the kitchen (ultrasellable khaki/taupe, for those who care)
• caulked and painted the new windows and doors, and
• had a new (insulated) automatic garage door installed

later this week we will be getting a new roof, courtesy of force majeure and the nice people at state farm insurance.  and we did it all with a two-week-old baby, who slept through the whole nightmarish mess in her well-ventilated swing.  i'm glad the weather's been nice.  and i'm glad Kitten's a happy baby.

Kitten's done great going out so far.  for her first outing we went to lowe's, and we tried out the infantino slingrider:

as my friend maria mentioned, this sling is sort of hot, but it is roomy and Kitten seemed to like it a lot.  she slept the whole time we walked around lowe's.  then we went to chili's to eat and she slept through dinner passed out in her carseat.  then we went to vintage stock.  still sleeping.  we got home and i woke her up to eat.  perfect baby!

our second outing (again to lowe's), we tried out a hotsling that maria loaned to me:

it fits more snugly and Kitten liked it, too.  except for the part where she spit up and it ran down the inside and soaked through all over my shirt before i could get to it with the burp cloth so we spent the rest of the outing sitting in the jeep waiting for J to finish up.  this is life with an infant.  

**confidential to maria: i promise i will wash it before i return it to you.

we also went to the ped's last week and aislinn got a good report.  after getting down to 6lbs .08oz from her birth weight of 6lbs 11oz, by the time she had her first peds appointment she was back up to 6lbs 7oz.  yay!  she had some monstrous diaper rash, though, which came on seemingly overnight and with a vengeance.  we followed her ped's advice to stop using the wet wipes and switch to kleenex soaked with a little baby oil and to use desitin or boudreaux's butt paste religiously, and it's almost gone.  poor little kiddo, though.  owwwww.

and if i were a better blogger, here is where new pictures of Kitten would go, but she's starting to fuss in her swing and i'm craving kool-aid, so you'll have to imagine it for now.

[picture of super adorable baby]