Categories
Uncategorized

Saving My Ass Five Hours A Week

DAILY SNACK

When the parents arrive at 11:30 to pick up their kids

From the Artful Child nursery school

Maria calls their names

One by one.

Colum always comes tearing around the corner

Calling out, “Mommy! Mommy!”

He loves it there.

Yesterday Maria told me that he is such a stable personality.

Wha?

If Colum is the stable personality in that room,

Then boy am I ever grateful to not be there for 2.5 hours two days a week.

We do not pay our Early Childhood Educators nearly enough.

(Cough, cough. Government.)

He is always so proud to bring home things like this:

crafts 002

Categories
Uncategorized

Nursery School No Big Deal

Young C started nursery school yesterday and I felt the first oh-no-my-baby’s-growing-up twinge since L’il I was born. It started to set in as I was hanging around for a little bit when we first arrived and he so clearly didn’t need me there — perhaps he didn’t even want me there. He cried everytime we dropped him off for the first few weeks of daycare last summer; yesterday he barely noticed when I left. I returned home and there was L’il I up on her hands and knees, rocking back and forth, on the verge of crawling and talking and nursery school herself. Or so it seemed.

This nursery school program is only two and a half hours long, twice or thrice weekly. It is hardly the trial of seperation that full-time daycare was. And the difference between two and three years of age is enormous. It’s no wonder he didn’t cry. In fact, we are reaching to be able to afford this program because he so clearly needs something. L’il I’s nap schedule and my desire/need to do some work during her naps means we’ve had to drop most of our routine morning outings. And even when we do get to the Early Years drop-in or a story time the average participant age is much closer to L’il I’s than it is to C’s. “There will be kids my age at my nursery school. Right, Mom?”