You'll Be So Proud of Me

I go back to work tomorrow (boo-hoo), so we began taking Miss A to day care on Thursday in order to ease me into it.

We started with just 4 hours on that day, and I handled it with a relatively small amount of tears. We left her there for 6 hours on Friday and 8 yesterday, with no tears at all from me. (See, I told you you'd be proud of me! :-) ).

Overall, I know it's a good thing for her. They have many more toys and activities for her than we do at home. Plus, the center where we're taking her is a day care center at an organization that works with people who have developmental disabilities, so they have early intervention specialists on site to do evaluations if the need should arise.

(We don't have any reason to think there's an issue with her, and most of the children in the center do not have disabilities. We wound up going there because several years ago when two of my friends had their kids in a day care center at the company my husband worked for, when the company offshored the jobs, they closed the day care center. The employees at that day care center recommended this one, and my friends ended up loving it even more than they loved the day care that closed. Plus, it's on the way to work for R, less than a mile from his office.)

Our grand plan is for me to get up early and work East Coast hours (3 hours ahead of me) since that's where my boss is. R and Miss A will sleep for about 2 hours longer than me, and then I'll take a break to nurse her when she gets up. Then R will drop her off at day care around 7:30, I'll pump 2-3 times a day while eating snacks/lunch, and then I'll pick her up between 2:30-3:30, depending on if there are any errands I need to do before I go get her.

Of course, that is a plan based on a house of cards - if the timing of one thing collapses, it all kind of collapses around us.

We've been practicing since Thursday. So far, we have not managed to get out of the house before 8 a.m., and since the plan is to have R and Miss A be at the day care between 7:30-7:45, clearly we have some work to do.

We'll see how all of this goes. I'm a little bit nervous about it, which I know is understandable. And thankfully I have a very flexible boss, and the ability to work from home most days, which helps a lot.

I just wish we had a money tree so that I could stay home with her. I hinted to R about that in some text messages a couple of weeks ago, with no luck. The reality is that in order to even start to make that feasible, we would need to downsize into a much smaller house (probably not a good idea, since a generous amount of square footage is what keeps me and my mom from teenage-girl-style cat fights) and not have any more major medical expenses (i.e. no attempts at a sibiling).

I'd like to try for a sibiling for Miss A in about a year, and R and my mom keep saying that if I want to sell the house, the buyer gets them included as part of the deal because they're not moving. And now that Miss A is here, they're outvoting me in saying that she would stay with the house too, so I guess there are no moving boxes in my immediate future... :-)