On the Sly

The day care issue grows ever more weird.

After the craziness of a few weeks ago, and on the urging of pretty much everyone I spoke to, I finally realized it was time to start looking into other day care options.

Nannies are pretty much out as an option, and I feel strongly about this. Even if we could afford it, I don't think I'd want Sadie staying with a nanny all day. For one thing, it doesn't address the issue that when Sadie and I are in the same house, work simply doesn't get done, regardless of how many other people are there taking care of her. 

So two weeks ago, I pulled out my old list of day care providers that I'd first put together back in Spring. Back then, you'll recall that I almost wound up sending Sadie to a different woman, an Armenian woman named Rose. I liked Rose a lot, but was slightly nervous about the fact that it's just her and a handful of kids at her house; the idea of having multiple caregivers there in case of emergency was more soothing, which was why I went with Happy Star.

Well, since times have changed, I called up Rose and left a sheepish message for her, saying I was interested again in hiring her to watch Sadie full time and asking if she had any availability. I didn't hear anything back, and so figured I was out of luck there.

Meanwhile, Sadie was getting closer and closer to being "fired" from Happy Star. I actually got the "your baby's on probation" speech from the owner -- who explained that they're getting an influx of new kids in September and will no longer be able to give Sadie the attention she needs. To her credit, she seemed very distressed to tell me this. We talked about how Sadie seemed to be settling into day care very nicely before we left for vacation last month, and how frustrating it's been to both of us (as well as to Sadie, I'm sure) that ever since we got back in town, Sadie's been miserable every day.

No matter how I looked at it, I couldn't think of a way to keep Sadie at Happy Star. And the following week, which was last week, I got a call back from Rose, saying she'd been on vacation but now that she was back, she had room for Sadie. We discussed next steps and agreed that I'd bring her for a "test day" that next Wednesday -- today.

I was grateful to Rose for being accommodating, but frankly, very nervous too. I couldn't imagine that if Sadie was putting up a fuss for people she was around every single day, she'd be any happier around a strange caregiver and strange kids, in an unfamiliar environment. 

And I can't deny anymore that she is becoming a more high-maintenance kid. To my parents and Scott's parents, she's a total dream -- because part of being a grandparent means showering your grandchild with attention, and as long as Sadie has that, she's perfectly happy.

The trouble begins when she doesn't get what she wants. See, she's become decidedly crafty, and has figured out that it's much easier to burst into tears than to expend energy figuring out how to do something herself. So if she's sitting next to a toy that's out of reach and she wants it, she cries for it. If she's sitting next to a table and wants to stand up, she cries instead of pulling herself up. If she cries loud, long and hard enough, she inevitably gets what she wanted. At day care they're in a tricky position, because they can't let Sadie sit and scream until she gets tired of it -- they have other kids to take care of, and as they've explained to me, the other kids get upset when Sadie gets upset, and the only way to keep the peace is to give her what she wants, when she wants it.

The result is that she's far behind on many of her milestones. She won't sit up from a lying down position, she doesn't crawl, she doesn't pull up (although she will if you take her hands and pull her up gently), she doesn't go for a toy that's out of her reach. Her world pretty much exists within a two foot diameter of wherever she happens to be sitting, and that's not good. I know that eventually she will learn how to do all of these things, but I can't help but be worried about them anyway.

So, there I was, anxious to remove her from Happy Star and anxious to start her someplace new that might upset her even more. Although I knew it was a total longshot, I crossed my fingers and hoped that against all odds, she might suddenly decide to go back to her normal self at Happy Star once again.

And what do you know? All of a sudden, that happened. Thursday and Friday of last week, she was like a new baby -- I picked her up and was told that she was happy all day, willing to sit and play by herself without fussing. Monday was Labor Day, but yesterday morning I brought her in and she lit up with smiles, throwing herself at the woman who answered the door. Not wanting to mess with success, I called up Rose and told her (ahem) that Sadie wasn't feeling great and I'd reschedule something for the following week. (I felt terrible lying, but what else could I have said, after begging her to take pity on me?)

Well, today I went to the front door to pick up Sadie, as usual, around 3pm. The owner answered the door with a giggling, laughing Sadie in her arms, and when she saw me, instead of throwing herself at me as she always does, she turned away and tried to hurl herself back inside for more playtime. The owner and I exchanged glances. "This is what we've been waiting for," she told me. "Always we've been hoping she would be happy with us."

What to do from this point on, I have no idea. I'm not going to mess with something that works -- but there's always the risk that next week, it might not. All I can do is wait and see from one day to the next.