daycare

After 9 months and a few odd days, Tessa went to daycare for the first time. She was giving me looks of confusion as I woke her up, dressed her, and packed her up with a couple bags. She didn't want to eat breakfast at my pace. She wanted to dink around and play with her cheerios. She didn't want to get dressed, she wanted to crawl around naked. She definitely didn't want to go in the carseat. Have I mentioned that the carseat is apparently the worst form of torture Tessa could think of?

I had every intention of leaving home ten minutes earlier than usual. It was only a couple miles to daycare, but I wanted to be prepared and help Tessa settle in a little. Well, 15 minutes later, we were out the door. I packed her a lunch, but forgot one for me. I packed her water bottle, but not my own. She had plenty of diapers, and I thought I might need one after this.

Off we were. Joel met us there since he was working overtime so he was still on duty. We got our access code, went in, and handed her off to the gal working in her room. But, we had 2 bags of stuff. Food for the day plus some extras for future days, milk, formula, bottles, everything. We had moved in.

I didn't realize until later that they said they provide almost all of that free of charge unless we need to bring her something because of an allergy. Oops. I'm a planner, I wanted to be prepared. And prepared I was. Just not for how easily Tessa would lurch out of my arms to go play. How dare she. Didn't she understand that this was supposed to be traumatic? I certainly did.

10 hours later, I was back to pick her up. Joel was going back into work early that day so he needed to go home and get some sleep and I was off work, ready to see her and see how her day was. Of course, she did very well. She wouldn't nap though because she's so curious about everything she doesn't want to miss a beat. I mean, how dare we suggest she get some rest so she's not a crank-o-pottamus. Alas, she won that round. She crashed about 5 minutes before I got there to pick her up and slept through the car ride home and an extra 45 minutes at home. I knew she'd give in eventually. Tessa's a strong willed one. I wonder who she gets that from!

So anyways, the moral of the story is, I had built this day up as a huge deal and very scary, and it was absolutely no big deal. She had fun. Joel got some much needed rest. And,  I finally got bumped up to full time hours again! More on that to come.

The next day, we left on time and I was actually to work 5 minutes early. We're professionals at this now.