Tuesday 1 September 2015

It's getting real

So, this whole working parent thing might be the nemesis of the blog, finally. I want to write (and read and comment) but suddenly there's less hours in the day. I'm doing a lot of "mental blogging": meaning I write it in my head but it doesn't get to the page. (Even as I write this mini-post I'm wondering if AJ is eating lint.) Mental blogging isn't nearly as satisfying however, since those unwritten posts don't offer any catharsis; they just hang around like a nagging headache.

So far so good though. I've been back at work  for four days, and today the real work started, with the students. Everybody went home happy, which is my measure of success for the first day. It will be a project to get to know this new group and figure out how to most benefit them, but at least so far I have a lot of help and support, so that's good. Mr. Turtle started six weeks of parental leave as soon as I went back to work.

Alice had her first day transitioning to daycare today. She stayed from 9:00 to 2:30. Mr. Turtle took her and stayed for about 15 minutes, after which he left because he felt like he wasn't needed. AJ seemed to enjoy herself a lot. She played, ate lentil soup, napped (!).  She only cried a bit before her nap (which she always does anyway). The staff said she could have easily stayed all day, but Mr. Turtle needed her back. The experience was much harder on him than her. He's promised to write a guest post about his time at home, so I'll let him tell his own story when he's ready. I think so far I've had the easier time because I have a lot of distractions at work, which is different than coming home to an empty house.

Things can change, of course, but we are hopeful that it will be a smooth transition. Even though there's no way to not feel a little sad and dismayed that our baby is growing up so fast.

The daycare uses a cool app called HiMama which allows them to send updates and photographs to parents. How awesome is that? I think we found an excellent daycare.

I will go now - precious moments with AJ! Ten month update soon, I hope, and other thoughts.

4 comments:

  1. Glad things are going so well! Looking forward to the ten month update!

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  2. Wow, what great news! That's great daycare is going well and you like them. It makes it a lot easier to go back to work.

    I'm pretty sure going back to work was the nemesis of my blog (that and mamas 4 mamas)

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    1. I did have an emotional moment today (missing AJ, but also missing my old job - not that the new gig is bad, but it's disorienting to have to adjust to a new role.) I would never say transitioning to daycare is easy! but I am glad that AJ is liking it at least and that we have a service we trust. I hope we can both update sometimes. With you non profit work you pretty much have two jobs so it must be very busy. But worth it I'm sure.

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