My wonderful mother-in-law keeps Stella Grace during the day for us, and we are so blessed to have her, but things are going to change just a little bit. SG is going to start Parents Day Out one day a week, Mondays. Stella Grace officially started PDO on Monday, and boy was it a day! I can truly say it was the most stressful day of my entire life. I racked my brain for other stressful days in my life... wedding day, taking my COMPS exam for grad school, taking my LSW licensure exam, etc., and I couldn't come up with another day when I felt like I did on Monday. Chris and I thoroughly checked the place out, toured the facilities, met with the director and asked her every crazy question I could think of, and observed the classrooms in action. The crazy paranoid social worker in me even called DCS, DHS, and the Dept. of Edu. to investigate any complaints that had ever been filed against the facility. I felt like I had done all I could do to make me feel comfortable with taking Stella to PDO, but apparently there was nothing I could do to prepare myself for dropping my child off on the first day. It was awful!!!The day started with Stella being overly weepy- not whiny or throwing a fit- real tears, laying her head on my shoulder, wimpering. I swear she knew what was about to happen! We were late on the first day because I couldn't take her while shew as crying so we rocked and took a bottle before leaving. Once we arrived, I was the one who started with the tears. The PDO director had to hug me in the hallway and tell me all new Mom's have a hard time leaving their kids on the first day- thank God, because I wanted to run and hide! I spent the next 6 hours at work crying in my office and counting down the minutes until I could go pick her up. I kept trying to come up with excuses for why I should go get her, but I made myself stick it out until 2:30 before I left.
When I arrived Stella Grace was playing on the floor with a couple of other babies. We gathered her things and I think I must have hugged her harder than I ever had on the walk to the car. She was exhausted and fell asleep in the car and didn't wake up until 3 hours later! Her activity sheet said she only napped at PDO for 30 minutes- hopefully due to all the stimulation and excitement from being around other babies. I know she will really love being around other children as she isn't around any at home, and this is going to be a MUCH bigger adjustment for her Mom than it will be for her :) We (I!) survived day one of PDO... Lord help me through next Monday!
Crying before we left- she so knew :(
after the bottle and rocking...
