D-Day

Today marks day three that Gunnar has been in daycare.  Monday was a hard day for me.  I cried when I went to put him in his car seat.  I cried harder when we stood at the office to check in for the first time.  I had to hand Gunnar to Kevin because I needed to pull myself together.  I didn't want to scare Gunnar and have him think that this was a bad place I was leaving him.  One of the mom's that had just dropped her kid off said everything would be ok, he was in a good place.  All the people were really nice, I'm sure I'm not the first mom to cry on the first day of daycare.  It was just an awful feeling. 

I hate that I can't stay home with him longer.  Ideally, I would love to get around 7 or 8 months or whenever he starts crawling with him before daycare.  But that was not a reality for us.  All the moms that get to stay at home with their kids, I hope you are thankful for that opportunity.  All the working moms that could stay home if they wanted to, I hope you are thankful for that opportunity too.  All the working moms that have to work but want to stay home, I feel your pain.  Stay strong.  Hopefully, one day I will be able to stay with my kids for a good chunk of their infancy.  I believe in daycare.  I was a daycare baby.  I think it teaches good social skills.  And I'm so excited to see all the little art projects they do with the kids.

The women I work with all knew what Monday meant for me.  Each one came up to me to ask how I was doing and told me stories of when they put their kids in daycare for the first time.  No one told me to gt over it and everyone said that never gets easier, you just learn to deal with it better.  It felt like I had joined a club.  It was nice that everyone was so understanding, especially my lab mates.  We don't really have the luxury of having an "off" day in non-profit research.  You have to bring your A+ game everyday.  They knew that a lot was on my mind but they still trusted me to get back into things and start doing science again, albeit slowly.  Lol.  It reminded me why I wanted to be in this kind of research in the first place.

Today when I went to check on Gunnar during my lunch, it was nap time for the older kids.  This means it was really quiet.  When I opened the door to the infant room, I could hear a baby yelling.  Not yelling in a bad way, the kind of way a baby yells when they have figured out the noise is coming from them.  We call it "talking" in the Kendi Haus.  I thought, "is that Gunnar?"  Sure enough, there was my baby boy bouncing in a bouncer with his new friends just "talking" to anybody that would listen.  He was totally fine and having a good time.  While I was happy to see this, I was also a little sad that he was doing so well without me.  I mean, I put everything I had into taking care of him for the last 4 months and it kinda felt like he was already over it.  I know that daycare is a new place and there are new friends to make and things to do, but it still hurt my feelings a little bit.  I'm so glad that he is happy there, I think I would be devastated if he was miserable and there was nothing I could do about it.  He is being a good boy and he is growing up.  I just hope he doesn't forget about his Mama who loves him more than he can imagine...

Cheers