1st Day of Daycare, Our New Normal

It's really hard to believe that Moira has just been here for 18 weeks. If there's one thing I can say to having is baby it's that changes happen constantly. She is changing by the minute of course, but also it seems like right when you get into a particular groove (maternity leave, paternity leave, Aunt Joanie babysitting, Christmas break, etc) it's time to change to something new. December was a whirlwind of change that ended with a week and a half of great family time for Christmas and New Years. And now yesterday began our new new normal- daycare.

After her first day. She was in a great mood coming home but exhausted once we walked through the door.

Since getting back from Boston last Saturday and with not much else to do besides wait I naturally let my mind go crazy thinking of all the what-ifs when we started daycare and basically driving Bill up a wall. All I really needed was for the day to come and to hell with all the waiting, but thus is life. Anyways, we both dropped her off yesterday morning and it couldn't have gone more smoothly. We left her in the arms of her teacher, Miss Tiffany, with a big smile on her face and another little girl already eyeing her while giggling on the bouncy seat. When I called at 11:30 to see if I needed to come pick her up (we had planned half days today and tomorrow to transition her in slowly), they said she was fine, had just had a bottle, was down for a nap and that she seemed totally fine to stay. So that's that. And it's silly to admit but I feel so proud that I have such a go-with-the-flow kiddo.

When I picked her up last night she was still happy and smiling. Her teachers said she did really well, eating every 3 hours, approx 15 ounces in total and napping with the other babies- already fast on her way to getting on their routine. With the exception of one boy she's in a class of all girls. I've probably gone over this before but we're still very excited that she got into this school. Besides having all the normal daycare infant play things (sweet teachers, bouncy seats, jumpers, loungers, tummy time) they also do story times, have music teachers come in, have a one-on-one arts teacher and when she graduates to the older classrooms she'll have a Mandarin teacher , do yoga, and have an indoor and outdoor gym to blow off steam. And once we get into the other daycare closer to home (by the same company), she'll have all those same activities but it's actually a bilingual school, with English taught in the morning and Mandarin in the afternoon- plus in-house Chinese chefs so she'll be eating a diverse and healthy array of Asian foods. And at that daycare they also teach kung fu too!

And of course we woke up today with a huge snowstorm smashing into the city. Since the daycare follows New York City public schools in closing for snow days so as soon as the mayor (Mr. Bill de Blasio!) announced schools were closed we got an email from the director announcing the same for them. So Moira and I are having a snow day. I figure it's a nice, if unexpected, break from our new routine. And so we're off to our new new normal... until we switch to the other daycare this spring.

Moira's daycare follows NYC public schools when closing for snow days

Happy girl celebrating her first snow day!