Tuesday, April 2, 2013

New School!

A couple of months ago we decided to move C&C from an in home day care to a preschool.
 
 Over the past year, I've struggled with our day care situation. I just wasn't fully happy with it. At first, I thought it was just a first time mom thing...hating that someone else was raising my kids all day every day while I was at work missing them and missing a lot of their firsts. But once I figured out that wasn't the whole issue, I knew I needed to make a change. I was either going to quit my job and be a stay at home mom, which I would have loved to do, or we were going to enroll them in the best school I could find in our area.
 
I went back and forth on this for months, not knowing what the right decision was. I wanted to be with them every day and I hated leaving them and I would cry every Monday morning on my way to work. But I was scared to quit my job because I was worried about not being about to save money. We would be able to survive on just David's paycheck but we wouldn't be able to put as much as we wanted to back in savings for us and for the babies.
So as much as I knew the best decision for me was to quit and stay home, in reality I knew that wasn't the best decision for our family. Maybe one day it will be, but just not right now. So I told David that since we know we can survive on his paycheck, I wanted to use one of my paychecks for the preschool and the other one would go into savings every month.
 
About 2 months ago, we enrolled the kids in the school and they just started yesterday. I'm already thrilled with it!
I knew it was a good decision when we took a tour and I got excited for the kids to finally get to see it all. And I got excited again when I got to meet their teacher and see how sweet and caring she is. Of course they were terrified when we took them for the first time yesterday. They said we could bring their favorite blankie or stuffed animal if we wanted to but I decided not to take Connor's blue blankie or Mickey and Chloe's Moo Moo or Minnie because they have never had those at day care before and I figured it would just be another avenue for germs to come home with us. But when I took Chloe's hat off of her yesterday morning when we got there she grabbed it and squeezed it tight like it was her Moo Moo.
 They held on to our hands very tightly while we walked them over to another little boy playing with some toys. As they watched him, we let go of them and snuck out of the room.
When I picked them up yesterday they were happily playing and the teacher said they had done really good. Nap time was a little hard but they still at least took a little nap. They had to transition from 2 naps a day to 1 and also sleep on a nap map instead of a crib or a pack n play. I was really worried about how that was going to go but apparently it went fine. They were so tired when we got home so they were a little fussier than normal and when we put them to bed at 7:00 they were asleep within 5 minutes.
 
Some of the things I'm really excited about at the school are things like this:
A menu plan so I can see what they're eating every day.
 
A list of fun activities for the month.
 
But most of all, I'm excited about this:
It's a daily report that shows what they did all day. What they learned, what they ate and how much of it, when they went to the bathroom, and a memorable moment. I love this! And I know they aren't just writing something down on a piece of paper just because they have to because when I saw Connor's memorable moment, I knew it was true. The boy loves Mickey Mouse and when I saw that rocking toy when we dropped them off, I knew he would probably be on that thing all day.
 
  I hope they will adjust well soon because I think this will help me out knowing that they're having fun and learning new things every day.

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