First Week

Holy cow, I am just now getting the chance to sit down and blog about this crazy, momentous week. I would love to elaborate, but my cute little ticking time bomb is playing in her play gym, and I have no idea how long she'll be satisfied, so here's the short version:

School is great. Great to be back. Great to see friends. Great to be back in my classroom, plugging away. It's so hard to get my brain to focus on school though, as I am still so tired, and having trouble switching easily from mom to teacher. I am nervous about having lesson plans, materials, and program prep ready for each week when at the end of the day, I just want to leave and go get Amelia. And when I have time to work on stuff AT work, I just can't get in the groove. I am thinking (and hoping) that this will get better over time.

Daycare is good. The night before we took her for the first time this week, I think I slept a total of three hours. I just kept laying there thinking that I wasn't going to get up in time to feed her and get myself ready for work. I didn't know when she would wake up and when she would be ready to eat. There were just too many unknowns to relax, and so I didn't. And neither did she. And neither did Ben. She woke up that night at 2:30 to eat, and I just fed her and cried. And when she woke up the next morning, I picked her up and held her and cried. But when I went to work I was fine.

Ben, on the other hand, had to drop her off at daycare. As much as he anticipated it "not being a big deal", he really struggled. As he left her, he kept turning around to look at her, and she was just staring at him like, "Daddy, where are you going? Why are you leaving me?" Waaaaay hard. He told me that if I had dropped her off, I would have never made it to work. Yikes.

So, so far so good. Our daycare lady is great - she writes us a note everyday telling us exactly what they did, and it sounds like Amelia is really enjoying it. There are other kids there that LOVE to entertain her...so much so that she probably comes home, looks at us now and thinks, "This is it? BORING!"

It is still hard to think about her being with someone else all day. I don't like that when I pick her up, she smells like our daycare lady. I don't like thinking about her playing toys and games without me, even though those were the things that I kind of got tired of doing this summer. If she is going to play toys, dangit, I want it to be with me!!!

I am also having trouble with dividing my time. There have been several times where I have had to choose between picking up Amelia, or doing something else, like going to a faculty party or having lunch with a friend. Either way, I feel bad about what I don't choose, and I am quickly realizing that this is how it will be the rest of my life. I don't want to let Amelia down, but I don't want to let other people down, either. This week, I chose the faculty party and lunch with a friend, and Amelia was just fine. One day Ben picked her up, and another day I picked her up, just a little bit later. Unfortunately, that was the only day this week that daycare did not go well because she was so gassy and fussy.
From a glass of wine I drank the night before.
At the faculty party.

At the end of the week, I am exhausted and emotionally spent. Yesterday I cried several times out of sheer frustration and lack of sleep. But the weekend comes with a welcome respite, and Ben is home, and we are all together, and there are extra smiles and hugs and pancakes and movies and piles of laundry folded and naps taken and blogs caught up...and I can breathe again.

And in a few days, we will start all over. :-)

HOLLA -