Thanks giving, Week 30

This might seem like an odd time to say this, but I'm really thankful for Oliver's daycare.  The facility he's out now (ooh, that sounds very institutional, doesn't it) is an employer-sponsored daycare, one of four sites available to Vanderbilt faculty and staff.  You'd think with that many locations it wouldn't take long to get a spot there, but (like with all the decent daycares around here, it seems), the wait list lasts anywhere from nine months to more than a year usually.  Because it's employer-sponsored, it has generous hours and rarely closes (they even send out surveys to see if enough people have to work major holidays -- like Christmas -- in which case they would stay open for those who need it) and all at the rate of a really cheap daycare.

Oliver started at a different facility last August when I went back to school because we were told he still had quite a wait for the Vanderbilt daycare.  The place was fine, especially for an infant.  The women there knew him, loved on him, and he came home happy, so I wasn't worried.  But six weeks into the school year, I got a call that they had a spot available at his current place, and it was even the location on Peabody's campus.  So two weeks later, he moved over with no adjustment necessary, and he's still there loving it.  We put in our application to the center last April when we came to Nashville house hunting.  I didn't know what I would be doing during the year but figured it didn't hurt to put in an application on the likelihood that I'd need a place for him, so our wait was April to October.

Wes and I rolled our eyes before having Oliver at people who said that daycare was "good for" their kids or that their kids "really liked it."  I don't know that the daycare is necessarily good for Oliver, but it certainly doesn't hurt him at all and I do think he's learning things there.  Not that he couldn't learn them at home, but it's nice that there's some effort at learning there, too.  And I do kind of think he likes it.  I know part of his up-and-at-em let's get to daycare in the morning is simply routine -- breakfast, shoes, hat, daycare.  But I've seen him when he gets there and when I pick him up, and he likes parts of it.  He knows his teachers and his classmates.  He loves the toys they have there that we don't have at home.  He likes the playground and shovels and tractors.  He's getting to the age that he plays with and not just nearby the other kids.   I watched several of them do ring-around-the-rosie, no adults involved, one day.  Oliver showed up, joined in between two kids, and ringed himself around that rosie.  He naps fine there, eats very well, and comes home filthy and worn out.  On a typical week, he gets dropped off around 9am and picked up around 3pm, which means he's there 30 hours a week.  It's not trivial, certainly, but it's not horrible.  There are lots of kids there whose typical day is 8-5 or even later.  And there are days Ollie gets dropped off a bit earlier or stays until 4pm or, if Wes has to pick him up, even 5 or 5:30pm, but that's usually one day here and there and not every day.  It's obvious on longer days that he's ready to come home.

Having the daycare there, convenient and affordable and decent, means Wes and I are able to do what we need to for ourselves and our careers and educations without worrying constantly about how he's doing and what he's missing at home.  Ollie is still going on my six-week "vacation," usually 2-3 days a week, in part to keep him in the routine -- we have to pay to keep his spot anyway, and I don't want him to have to get used to it again in the fall, especially when he moves up to a 2-year-old room -- and in part to give me time to run errands that are easier without him, get things done around the house without being hounded to read books, and just take a nap if I want to.  It's a luxury, one I feel is sometimes at his expense, but I also think that, if used sparingly isn't doing any damage and makes me much more fun to be with when he's at home with me.  On the days he does stay home this summer, I don't worry about housework or errands or anything like that.  We just play and do fun things.  That's not true of every day, like weekends, but it's fun for those few days we are just with each other.

I have been thankful for the daycare in the past week for a different reason.  I got Oliver's cold and am completely hoarse.  Parenting with absolutely no voice is not the easiest thing, so Ollie went for short days at daycare so that he could play and I could rest.  My favorite part of the daycare day is, of course, picking him up.  He usually immediately drops whatever he's doing and runs over, wanting picked up.  He walks to "Oliver's car," and on the way home talks about his day and "dada" (usually followed by "work"), "Soosy," "home."