More Than Many Sparrows

There are two things I feel like grumbling about right now. I guess I'll start with unrealized potential.

The biggest thing I have learned over the past three years or so of being out of school and in the workforce is that there is nothing I can't learn. Even stuff that previously seemed out of my league and simply not my style is totally attainable if I want to go after it. So far, I've proved this to myself in matters relating to auto insurance, cars, and medical evidence. I might not truly have the potential to make it to the top in the arenas of math and science, but a lot of stuff I just never even considered within my range of understanding is actually completely in my reach. Whaddya know.

Some things came easily to me in school, like reading and writing. I was always encouraged in those areas, and I liked them. That's why I ended up majoring in English and then getting an MFA in creative writing. I liked that stuff, and it seemed attainable. It held my attention. I had about nil career ambition until I was already working, so making choices for college and grad school wasn't about taking a direction or building a foundation. It was about doing what interested me. "Following my heart," if you will.

And there was a deliberate resistance to just going to school to do something that would make money.

I wish I had realized that there are plenty of profitable career choices that would have been interesting to me, and that I could have pursued a number of paths successfully. I wish I had understood the value of money, too. One summer, I almost decided to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to go to some Catholic school somewhere and meet my future uber-Catholic husband. Wouldn't that have been a riot? All that debt, just to get married and have fifty NFP babies and no way to pay it all back.

I could have gone to law school, for example, like a high school friend who at my age is a bona fide lawyer and has a husband and child almost exactly Penelope's age. I would have found that very interesting, and I could have made myself much better equipped for going to work and still been free to make the same choices for my personal life that I did, like getting married and starting a family. That part I always knew I wanted to do. It was having a job and a career I never saw in my future.

I got an MFA, and what am I doing with it? Nothing. Having a master's probably has given me an edge getting the last couple of jobs I've had, but I have been a very poor steward of this degree. I haven't written any fiction since I finished my thesis. There are all kinds of reasons, sure, but now I don't even feel compelled to write fiction. I have zero fiction inspiration. Which doesn't usually bother me, because I am who I am, but at the same time, it seems like a shame. Sometimes people from the MFA program will say, "What are you writing?" or "I enjoyed your stuff!" I have to say I'm not writing.

And writing fiction isn't exactly like riding a bicycle. You work at it to get better at it, and it's use it or lose it. I have been out of the MFA program now for longer than I was in it. And I have not used it. I was really proud of the level I achieved with my writing at the end of that, but I didn't maintain it.

So what I've done, now, is get a degree I'm not using and which does not give me any particularly marketable or profitable abilities. And I did this when there was a variety of degrees I could have pursued that would have helped me launch a career. I did this because it never occurred to me that I would even be able to do something like law or medicine or what-have-you, and so I never gave anything like that a second glance. What difference would it make if it interested me? I could never have done it!

And at this point, it's kind of too late. I have student debt and consumer debt, plus grown-up-sized bills like a mortgage, plus a child. The time for education has come and gone, at least for the foreseeable future. I need to concentrate on advancing the career I'm in.

I also need to figure out how to impart this wisdom to my children.

I want to make the disclaimer that I'm not saying I regret going to the MFA program. I loved the MFA program. I told someone recently that I count that time, and particularly my final year, as one of the high points of my entire life. I just feel like I was being short-sighted. Why did I want that degree? I knew I didn't want to teach and that I didn't want to be a Capital-W-Writer. You can be a writer or artist without getting a degree. Of course, study only helps... bah. You can't change the past, and I wouldn't change it. I'm just understanding the consequences of my actions, and it's a bit of a pisser.
The other thing I wanted to grumble about is religion, but that'll have to wait for another day.

Today, my friend's wife's contact wrote to my friend's wife, and she forwarded it to him, who forwarded it to me. Basically, if I want them to investigate, I have to call on my own to give the details.

I don't think I will at this point. I still want to talk to one of the owners. I haven't been by there, though, because Penelope has been sick and staying at home with Lee, and in fact she may stay home again tomorrow.

As I indicated I would at the end of my last entry, I talked to my co-worker whose wife does inspections, and then I sent him an email to send to her, asking some questions and giving a short description about why I was asking.

She didn't answer, but istead said she would "forward the complaint to the DCP inspector, and they will investigate."

Oops? I didn't mean to unleash the dogs, necessarily. I just wanted to be sure I knew the law.

Guess we'll find out soon!

"No way!" is what Penelope says now instead of just "No." I can't help laughing at her expense just a little when I hear her struggling against some stubbornness (a magnet that won't stick to plastic, or a baby doll that won't sit up in a chair, or some other such thing) and shouting, "No way! NO WAY!"

This is the end of week 2 at the New Baby School, and I have mixed feelings. On one hand, she's been in a good mood when I've come to pick her up. She's brought home a stack of artwork each Friday. They tell me she naps and eats just fine.

On the other hand, there have been a few events that have given me pause. Let me say before I get into them that I don't think these are... all that bad. They give me pause, and that's why I'm writing about them, but I don't have any fear that Penelope is in immediate peril of physical, emotional, or spiritual harm, so I'm not yanking her out of there just yet. And I hope I won't feel I need to.

Event #1
As I posted last time, on the second day, I arrived in the afternoon to pick Penelope up. To set the scene, you walk in the front door, past the front desk where the assistant director is usually sitting, and down a short hall, and there behind a waist-high door is a large room that is divided in two by a wall of cubbies that's about the height of an adult, at the end of which there is another waist-high door. The near side is for children ages 18 months to 2 years, and the far side is for young 2-year-olds. Penelope is on the far side. Sometimes the two classes combine, like when they go outside, but so far I haven't seen them combine inside. For some reason, I thought they would if one side was inequitably full of children, but I haven't seen it. And on that second day, there would have been a good reason to combine: on Penelope's side, the teacher had just three kids, but on the near side, the one teacher present had NINE, and at least one of them was screaming his head off. Florida law says that in classrooms of children that age, there should be no more than 6 children to a teacher, and no more than 12 children to a class. Even though both of these classes are in one big room, it's still divided, and so it still counts as two classes. I felt like I should say something to somebody... but I didn't. As I was leaving, the assistant director came and got the kid who was screaming and took him to sit with her at the desk, leaving the remaining 8 children with the one teacher, still out of ratio.

I kind of kicked myself for not questioning this, so the next morning, as we walked in the door, I asked the assistant director. "They're supposed to have six per teacher over there, right?"

Yes, she confirmed.

"But she had nine yesterday!" I tried to say it while smiling so as not to appear a humongous bitch. "And she seemed to be having a hard time of it."

"Well," she said, "someone could have been in the bathroom, or going for supplies, or something like that."

I think I just kind of accepted that answer, at least to the assistant director, and then I went and dropped off Penelope. As I came back out again, she stopped me and said, "Hey, I just want you to know that we are never out of ratio!" She seemed flustered, and she went on to explain that the ratios are larger when the children are napping, but otherwise, they take the ratios very seriously, and they never go out of ratio. Someone might have just stepped out for a minute. And as to the kids being upset, a couple of them were just getting through being sick, and a lot of children get upset at the end of the day when they see the other children's mommies and begin to wonder where their own are.

I left feeling at least like I had given the impression I was paying attention, which certainly can't hurt.

Event #2
I want to say this one happened Tuesday of this week. Penelope had gone back and forth in her mood at drop off time. She had good days the first week when she marched right in alongside me and waved goodbye as I left, and bad days when she started crying as soon as we turned the corner and she saw the Baby School. On this particular day, she was unhappy, and I sat with her in the car for a few minutes to try to talk her down. I reminded her of what fun she would have playing outside and playing games and playing with friends and eating snack and blah blah blah. She was not falling for it, and as we got into her room, she began to cry in earnest. In my previous day care experience, the best thing to do when that happens is to leave her in the capable hands of her teacher and depart quickly while the teacher jumps in with some slick redirection and/or comforting words. And in fact, it had worked out that way just fine a couple of times in week 1. But on this particular day, her teacher was chit-chatting with some other teachers and this woman who I did not recognize but who, from what I could gather from their conversation, had just gotten off of some kind of leave. She might have been a parent, and they were all catching up. As I began my quick exit, expecting Penelope's teacher to pick her up, I realized she wasn't going to, because she was busy. But I was on my way to the door, and I knew I wasn't supposed to waffle, so I just left. I lingered outside the door for a while, and Penelope continued to cry, but I couldn't see to tell whether the teacher picked her up. Eventually, I left, kicking myself for not physically placing my child in the teacher's arms, or at least saying loudly something along the lines of, "Oh, don't worry, Penelope! Miss Annette will pick you up RIGHT NOW!"

I did call soon after I got to work to see how she was, and Miss Annette said, "Oh, she's fine. She's playing. I picked her up, and she stopped crying right after you left." Which wasn't exactly how I remember it, but maybe it happened that way.

That day, my friend Kelly at work asked me how the NBS was going. She's the one who encouraged me to make the switch when I was agonizing about it before. I told her about the recent events, and she said I definitely was onto something feeling that these things weren't right. She said particularly that the teacher didn't seem trustworthy since she said she picked up Penelope when I know she didn't, and since she said she stopped crying right after I left, when I heard her crying for maybe a minute after. To be fair, it really was less than a minute between when I walked out of sight and when I actually left, which isn't that long. Maybe she did pick Penelope up soon after. Maybe Penelope did stop crying before long. I wasn't there, so I really don't know.

While Kelly and I were talking, a few others joined the conversation, and I found out that another co-worker had her son at this baby school from age almost 4 until he was ready for kindergarten. He's in second grade now. She liked it a lot and highly recommends it. She also said that the owners are really nice, and the assistant director is "kind of squirrelly" (I did notice that!). She said I should arrange a meeting with one of the co-owners so that I could discuss my concerns. Kelly agreed; "tell her you just want to talk to her about it before you talk yourself out of the place."

The thing about Event 2 is that, while Penelope may be the center of my universe, she's not the center of everybody's. At some point in life, she's got to learn to buck up when Mommy leaves. Yes, almost-two is too young to have to learn that lesson without getting hugs from somebody, but then again, if I'm going to leave my kid with paid strangers, I have to know that the consequence is that paid strangers are the ones staying with her all day. Sometimes, she might cry for a little bit before somebody comes to soothe her. Sometimes, yes, she might cry in a non-danger situation, and nobody might come to soothe her. Hell, sometimes at home she cries in non-danger situations (see the first paragraph of this entry!), and I don't always come and hug her and say, "It's okay that the baby doll won't sit in the chair! IT'S OKAY!!!!"

Event 2.5
When I came to pick her up that afternoon, she was outside with the two combined classes and the two afternoon teachers I recognized, plus one lady I did not recognize. Penelope hugged me, and we stood to leave, and I told her, "Say bye bye!"

She said, "Bye bye!"

Then the lady I didn't recognize said, "I didn't know she could talk!"

Okay, seriously? You didn't know she could talk? Please tell me you have only just spent the last sixty seconds with my child, because if you don't know she can talk, one of two things is happening: you are not paying attention, or she's spending her entire days in stone cold silence. She can't always talk intelligibly, especially to people who aren't me, but she talks pretty frequently.

Like I said, though, I did not recognize that teacher, and I know she's not one of Penelope's regulars. Maybe she's a fill-in, or maybe she normally takes another class and was just hanging out with our teachers during outside time. Who knows.

Event 3
This happened this morning. The teacher in the near part of the large room had only two or three children, so she was good, but on our side, there were already 7 or 8 kids when we arrived, and just one teacher. I stood there, holding Penelope, who thankfully was in an amicable enough mood, wondering what to do. There wasn't enough manpower! It was so obvious! The ratio was way off!

I left her, said good bye, and went to the squirrelly assistant director at the front desk. "Let me just ask you about the ratios again," I said. "Six kids per teacher, right? On each side in there?"

"Yes," she said.

"Okay," I said, "because there are 8 or 9 on that back side right now, and only one teacher."

"Really?" said the SAD. She ran back there, and I heard her say, "How many does she have?"

"I don't know!" the teacher said. There was counting. Then, "Ten."

"Ten? Are they all twos?"

More counting. "Yes."

The SAD came back and told me that, well, one of the staff members just wasn't there yet. And in fact, I looked out the window and saw Miss Annette walking across the parking lot. "Sometimes they all get here before we all do," the SAD explained. "The other teacher just hasn't gotten here."

"Well, I see her coming now," I said, and the SAD smiled as if to say, "see? No worries."

But, for serious, that does bother me. They have those ratios for a reason. I have never noticed one of our day cares to be out of ratio before, and I've spent plenty of time at our respective Baby Schools. I've heard teachers ask for backup so they could step out to the bathroom, and I've heard teachers conferring with each other when they knew they would be out of ratio in a few minutes when the next kid showed up but the second staffer had not. I'm pretty sure that legally they have to make those kinds of plans rather than just shrug off the ratio, even for a few minutes. I also know that in six months or so, Penelope will go to the classroom where the ratio is actually eleven to one, but for now, she's in this classroom. And the ratio is six to one.

After that, I went to Tom Thumb to get a drink on my way to work, and I recognized one of the patrons as somebody who had just dropped off her child in the near class of the two in the large room. I struck up a conversation. She must have heard me talking to the SAD about the ratios, because the first thing she said to me was, "It'll be fine," or something reassuring like that.

"I'm sure it will be," I said, "but this is only our second week, and I've seen them out of ratio twice!"

"And you will in the mornings," she said. "That happens all the time, but everybody is there by 8, and then it's fine."

She told me that her older child went there for a few years, and now her younger is there, and she has always been very happy. And she actually heard of this place because she was at a much worse place for a week. There, she saw a teacher throw a pen at a child, and she called someone with the state to complain and beg for a recommendation. They referred her to this place.

I want to have perspective. I'm not witnessing people throwing things at children. I'm not suspecting abuse. My kid's not coming home with bruises or burns. And I have talked to lots of parents, who recommend the place so highly, and I have seen at least two very positive online reviews--which kind of says something, because most day cares here have no online reviews whatsoever, and this place has two.

For those and all the reasons I talked about when I was obsessing over this before, I really want this to work. And I don't want to yank Penelope out of this place now if she's happy and adjusting -- ugh! She just moved! She would be so confused and weirded out! But WTF with the ratios, people? WTF?

I haven't made that appointment with the co-owner yet, but I probably will. Before I do, however, I'm going to talk to one of my coworkers who was out of the office all this week. His wife does inspections for the state, and I would like him to ask her for me if in fact the law allows for little lapses in ratio, like for bathroom breaks or when your second staffer hasn't made it in yet. I mean, maybe it does. I'd like to be informed.

In the meantime, ( click here for some recent bathy pictures. )

New Baby School (NBS?) Day II was even better than Day I. As I discussed at the end of my last entry, yesterday started a little rocky but was reported to be just fine by outside time, and it ended with a happy hello for me and a cheerful "bye bye" for new teachers and friends when I came to pick Penelope up.

This morning, Penelope walked in with me like everything was normal. But as we walked into her classroom and I chatted with her teacher, her face began to crumple, and she looked like she thought she ought to cry as I began to bid her farewell. But it lasted only a second, and then she actually waved and said "bye bye" to me.

I don't think she's ever done that before. She actually never, ever did that at the previous Baby School. More often, she clung to me with monkey legs and scowled as I left. Sometimes, she cried. We all declared months ago that Penelope just wasn't a morning person, and her deep little frowns were kind of amusing. In the afternoons, they were usually playing on the playground when I arrived, and she usually had to be coerced into leaving. As often as not, she had one kind of meltdown or another on the way out to the car.

I wonder if there was some kind of stresser at the previous place that made her seem so ill-tempered when it was coming or going time. I certainly saw her looking happy there, too, like when I arrived in the middle of singing or stories and got to watch for a minute before I was seen. And she always seemed to be having a good time on the playground. And she always answered affirmatively when I asked her if she had a good day and if she liked her friend so-and-so or her teacher Miss such-and-such.

Then again, her two best days in recent memory at the previous Baby School were the last day Ms. Nancy was there before Penelope left, and then Penelope's last day, when she likely was getting copious amounts of extra special attention.

I don't know what I all means, and I don't want to over-think it. It's just been a very pleasant surprise these last two days to see Penelope adjust so easily when I was so scared it was going to be a nightmare.

This afternoon at the NBS, Penelope was again happy to see me, but again not in a "get me the hell out of here" way.

I did see something that made me uneasy: the group one level down from her is in the room next door, and you have to walk through to get to Penelope's class. They normally mix the kids up in the early mornings or late afternoons when one side or the other is reduced, so as to have a smaller staff at less populated times but still maintain the appropriate class sizes. But this afternoon, the teacher on that younger side had NINE children with her, when she's only supposed to have six, or she should have had another teacher. Penelope's teacher just had three. I should have said something to somebody, if only to get someone to relieve her, or even just to make it clear that, hey, I'm paying attention to this stuff. But I didn't. Maybe I will in the morning.

FBAW '09 was a fantastic success.

It started after work on Friday. I picked up Penelope after her last day at her Baby School, and she was in a terrible mood. But I kissed her and wished her and Lee a happy weekend, and then Blair and I adjourned to the Metling Pot for dinner.



( Mm, Lemon Drop Martinis. )

Blair had a great idea the other day: we should abandon our babies and go on a trip together. A weekend getaway.

I've never left Penelope over night before. That means I haven't slept through the night more than a handful of times since she was born. And Blair and I haven't had a weekend dedicated to girlie bonding in three years, and even then, she was pregnant with Nora.

It's high time. I said yes. After checking, of course, to make sure Lee was okay with braving the uncharted wilds of Penelope at night time without Mommy. Which he was.

We decided last night that this coming weekend is it: the Fantasy Baby Abandoning Weekend, or FBAW (which sounds like "F-bomb" when you say it out loud, which is so appropriate).

Soooo excited! My bathing suits are already in my overnight bag, and I'm going to purchase some beachy coconut rum to enjoy by the pool.



So. Ex. Cite. Ed.

I'm starting Weight Watchers again. This sedentary job is really ratcheting up the consequences of over-snacking, while at the same time making grazing all the more desirable. But I finally reached a weight I have only ever seen in pregnancy, so it's time to get back on the wagon. I had done WW for a little while when I went back to work in 2007, after having Penelope, but somewhere along the way I got too busy and distracted to deal with it, and I wound up paying for several months without using it. So I finally just canceled.

They keep sending me promotional codes to waive the start-up fee, so I took advantage last night. The whole site--and in fact the WW system--has changed. I entered my starting weight, and the site suggested I make a 5% weight loss my first goal, so I did. Ha ha, my 5% goal is higher than my post-pregnancy starting weight. Ugh.

Here's to healthier eating! If anybody has some easy, cheap, low-points recipes they want to share, I'm all about it, because I don't think I can stand to live on those frozen meals this time the way I did in 2006.

Well, I did it: I paid the registration fee to the PBS and withdrew Penelope from the CBS. Penelope's first day at her new Baby School will be June 1.

Her CBS teachers were, of course, very understanding, though Ms. Nancy's first reaction when I said, "We're switching Baby Schools because our new house is kind of far..." was "Where is it? Mars?" HAH. But I told them where our house is and where the PBS is, and they were like, "Oh, yeah, that's a lot closer." And they totally got that $300 a month is a big savings.

They have heard of the PBS, but nothing specific. They noted that it's been there a long time, which usually means they must be okay, because the really crappy day cares get closed down before they make it very long. They also said they were sure Penelope would adjust fine and thrive wherever she went.

I felt bad because Ms. Nancy, who has been Penelope's favorite teacher, is going on vacation tomorrow, so she only had Tuesday and Wednesday to register her goodbyes and well wishes. I didn't realize I was springing this news on her at the last second; I intended to give the full two weeks' notice I'm supposed to (well, minus a day, because I told them on Tuesday instead of Monday).

She told me, "Oh, don't come until 5:30 on Wednesday, so I can spend as much time with her as I can!" I would have done it, but then this morning, she said, "You don't have to do that. I forgot I leave at 4 today." So I arrived around 5, which is actually a few minutes late for me, but she was still there.

Penelope was, thankfully, in a cheerful mood at departure time. This is not always the case. But she still didn't want to give Ms. Nancy a hug goodbye, which Ms. Nancy took in stride, saying, "Well, she's had lots and lots of hugs today." Penelope opted instead to offer a wave, a "bye bye" and a somewhat bewildered-looking smile. Ms. Nancy told me again how she knows Penelope will be fine at her new Baby School. "She's saying so many new words now," she said. But she also added, "Soon, she'll forget all about us."

Which is true.

Part of the way I psyched myself up to do this was by telling myself, "Oh, they've been in this business for years, and they deal with kids leaving all the time. This will not be a big deal to them." And I'm sure it's not a BIG deal to them, not the way it has been to me, but it is nice to know that Ms. Nancy cares. Srsly. It must actually be pretty hard for her when her kids leave, especially kids like Penelope who have been there for 6 or 7 months and who have enjoyed a sweet friendship. Because they ARE too young to remember her.

So, yeah, we have the rest of this week, and then next week. And, yes, I did cry after I left the morning I told them. Bah. I'm such a nerd.

Here is a picture from Mother's Day. Penelope is eating cold pizza. I am holding the T-shirt she "made" for me at Baby School.

So I made a poll. If you've been following along, please vote!

Poll #1401051 Day care dilemma
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Should we switch Penelope from our current Baby School to the Potential Baby School? Check all that apply.

Written on Friday.

So I visited the contentious Potential Baby School today (referred from here as PBS). I wanted to go at a good time when I could see some action, so I came when they told me nap time ends: 2:00. But of course, I should have realized that nap time doesn't just stop at 2 on the dot, that everyone doesn't jump up and assemble into circle time. The kids were still asleep when I got there, so I just talked to the teachers and the director again. Oh, and Penelope was with me, because she was sick last night. It's probably really bad of me that I brought her there, since she couldn't go to her OWN Baby School today, but she's not sick today, so it's fine. I swear.

Anyway, it wasn't a dazzling, pre-rehearsed tour like I like, but everything they told me sounded good. They are accredited. They have a curriculum. This month, for instance, they are learning the colors black and white, so there are construction paper chains in those colors hanging from the ceiling that will be swapped out next month when they move on to another color. They work on art projects and drawings and stuff all the time and have their working hanging all over the place. Our current Baby School almost never sends home Penelope's work like that, so I guess they don't do a lot of it, which is a big point for PBS since I think that kind of thing is kind of important.

Penelope will be in the young 2s room if she goes there. They move to the older 2s when they are almost ready to potty train, and in that class, they potty train in groups of 2 or 3. They tell me it takes only 2-3 weeks to accomplish potty training, and the teacher works with you to help you know what to be doing at home while they are working on potty training at school. However, if it seems apparent that a child is NOT ready to potty train, they stop and wait a while longer.

I saw the baby room, too, since that's of interest to me. There were only 3 babies there at the time, so only one teacher, but they have up to 8 babies and 1 teacher per 4. That's what our Baby School in Connecticut had, and it worked out fine. The classroom is very small, and there are swings and bouncy seats and excersaucers. That's something I didn't like about the CT day care I ended up ditching: I worried that they might slap the kids in a swing and ignore them. That may or may not be a valid fear. On the plus side, the baby teacher was talking to me about transitioning and said they had a baby who took almost a month to become accustomed to being there. "She would cry, and we would hold her, and we would try this and try that, and hold her some more," the lady told me. So holding babies is something they do! In fact, she picked up a crying baby while I was there. She seemed pretty attentive.

The class sizes beyond the baby room are somewhat concerning. For Penelope's class, there will be 6 kids to a teacher, with two classes side by side and divided by a half wall like I described before. Penelope will have one teacher she knows as her own teacher, but she will be familiar with the other teachers who are around, filling in for lunches and stuff. When the class sizes are reduced by people being out or going home, the classes may be combined. They are combined with the older 2s for outside play.

The older 2s class size jumps from 6 per teacher to 11! If I understand correctly, there can be up to 22 kids in that room with 2 teachers, though right now there are 18. That's a really big group of 2-year-olds. An article on parenting.com recommends ratios no greater than 4:1 for toddlers and 10:1 for preschoolers. Our current Baby School has up to 18 kids in the 2-year-old room and 3 teachers. The class Penelope is in right now is just before the 2-year-old room, and there are 2 teachers and up to 10 children, but I counted the list of kids yesterday, and there are only 7. Then the class sizes get bigger for 3s and 4s, but now I'm not sure what they get to, nor am I sure what they are at our current location. Actually, I take that back: the ratio at the current Baby School is 5:1 for our current class, 6:1 for the 2-year-old class (so the same as PBS for the class we'd be entering now) and 9:1 for 3-5 years.

Another difference is that our current Baby School has this special Montessori language for stuff. Like they don't say "no" or "don't"; they instead say what it is they want to happen. So instead of "stop running," they say "use your walking feet." Or they teach the children to stick up for themselves by saying "My body!" if someone hits or otherwise touches them. At the PBS, there was some of that "positive language" use, but there was also "no." At one point, one kid did something to some other kid (I didn't see it), and the teacher said, "No, no, not nice!" Then all the other kids began saying to each other, "No, no, not nice!" So it's clearly something they hear as commonly as Penelope hears "My body!" I confess I feel pretty ambivalent about the usefulness of one method over the other, and I say "no" in my home all the time. But so help me, I still love that "my body" crap. So help me!

Because we arrived at the end of nap, we left and went to run some errands and hoped to return in time for circle time. But we missed circle time and got there for outside time. So we went to the playground. It's a nice, spacious playground with lots to do, and the age groups are segregated to keep the bigger kids from the smaller ones. Our current Baby School's playground is pretty small and crappy, which is forgivable because the center is in the middle of this downtown building, and they've fashioned the narrow space between two buildings into a playground. The kids have just as much fun there as they would anywhere else, so who cares. However, there is only the one playground, and at the end of the day, everyone is playing on it.

Penelope just stood holding my hand for the longest time, but she eventually went to play. She didn't really play with the other kids; as far as I know, she doesn't play much with other kids at her current Baby School. She seems to prefer to do her own thing and will wait for the toy or equipment she wants to free up so she can have it to herself. She really did not interact with any of the other kids or teachers while we were at the PBS, even when the teachers tried to talk to her, but she didn't have her nap today, and she's always funny around strangers. But she watched everyone very closely and did seem to have a good time.

After playground time was over, we all went inside, and the kids sat at their tables while the teachers changed everyone's diaper one at a time. My concern about class size is what if that many kids aren't controllable, and you just have chaos most of the day? But the kids did really well sitting in their places, waiting their turns. I peeked into the older 2 room and saw that they were all sitting nicely at tables, too, playing with musical instruments. Music: nice.

A moment of music: not so nice happened during that diaper changing time, too, when someone turned the music on and "Who Let the Dogs Out" started playing. Not even the Kidz Bop version. I'm not gonna lie and say I don't play that crap when my kid is around, but that's a bit unexpected for the day care's choice of music. So that's a point away from PBS. However, I do not think PBS shows videos, and current Baby School does sometimes. Again, I'm not gonna lie and say I don't show my kid some videos, but that's kind of the point: she watches more than enough TV at home and doesn't need to watch it at school.

Another concern about class size is the possibility of one-on-one time. The assistant director talked to me about that a bit. She said they divide some activities so that the teacher can work with groups of 3 at time--art projects, for instance--and then she's able to focus on one child within that group. She said that throughout the day, the have one-on-one time with the children, hold them when they are crying, and do everything they can to contribute to their enrichment. One of the teachers in a separate conversation also advised that they spend one-on-one time with the children.

They also evaluate each child quarterly to see how well they are learning the elements of the curriculum such as numbers, ABCs, whatever. They give those who are struggling extra attention. And they keep the parents informed. They also give you a daily slip to say how your kid ate, napped and behaved, and how many diapers she had. That's something our CT Baby School did and that our current Baby School does not but that I wish they did. Many days, I have no idea if Penelope ate lunch or took a nap unless I ask. And I never know how she's doing with her speech, her socialization, her learning while at school. So that's another point for PBS.

Finally, as we left, I snagged a mom who was going in and asked her what she thought about the PBS. She said she's had her kids there for 4 years and really likes it. She says the pre-K is especially phenomenal. She said her youngest son potty trained in 2 weeks and she wishes her other kids had been there at the potty training age.

I confirmed that the PBS is actually $75 less per week than the current Baby School, not just $55, because the PBS offers a $20 discount for paying on time. That's pretty easy since the payments are taken electronically every week. That's $300 a month. So what I have to decide is whether the things I'm getting at the current Baby School make it worth $75 a week and 40 minutes a day.

Those things include
1. smaller class sizes.
2. beloved namby-pamby Montessori language.
3. status.
4. the ability to say I send my child to the best day care in town, which most people have heard of when I name it.

Points the PBS has over the current Baby School:
1. $75 per week savings.
2. 20 minutes shaved off my commute, each way.
3. more art projects.
4. daily reports of Penelope's basic activities.
5. quarterly reports of Penelope's developmental progress.

So how much are smaller, but not that much smaller, class sizes, and fuzzy-wuzzy language, but not exclusively fuzzy-wuzzy... worth? Are they worth $75 a week and 40 minutes a day?

I've emailed back and forth with a friend from high school who has her daughter in a decent day care that isn't the Best In Town. She says she's so neurotic about decisions in her life that she's trying to be the opposite when it comes to her daughter so that her daughter won't grow up to be as crazy as she is. Compelling idea. I do seem to add far more hands-wringing than necessary to a lot of choices. This day care is fine; there's really nothing wrong with it. The kids seemed happy there, and they seemed to like their teachers! I saw lots of interacting on the same level, and lots of hugging. Those are the most important things in some ways.

And the honest truth is that I can't afford our current day care if we have another child, which we definitely will. It's tough affording it now.

But for some reason, I'm having so much trouble making this leap. I don't know why! I wouldn't say my gut is against it; my gut is just extremely indecisive and over-analytical. This is not about going with my intuition. It doesn't feel like my intuition holding me back. It feels like my neuroses. I feel like anyone else, if presented with the current information, would go ahead and switch. When I told Lee all about it, he said he thinks we should switch. So what's the matter with me?

The thought has crossed my mind to just wait, but in fact this is actually a good time to make the switch if I'm going to make it. Penelope will move up to the next level at her current Baby School very soon anyway, so that transition will be difficult in its own way (though probably less so than going to a whole new location since some of her former classmates are in the older room, and the building and playground will still be familiar, and her old teachers are just right next door). Better to change schools, if we're going to, before she moves up to the next class so as to create as little uprooting as possible. Also, the PBS has an opening now. Furthermore, we do want to have another baby, but if I wait until I am pregnant again to switch, maybe there won't be room in the baby room, whereas if Penelope is already attending there when I get pregnant, our spot in the baby room is almost assured.

Blech. I don't know what to dooooo.

Okay, I rarely talk about my TV shows, but this I've got to say.

( Spoilers behind the cut! )

That felt good.

Missy, Allison makes me think of you. I think she is not unlike you. I wish we could all three be friends together at UNO.

I'm feeling a lot of anxiety about finances lately. We're not in any trouble, but we're stretched pretty thin. At least it feels that way. I think the biggest stresser is the debt we incurred getting here and until I got a job. The bleeding has stopped, but I find myself wishing for a windfall so I could put those bills to sleep. I can't really put a dent in it making what I make. I'm just chipping away a tiny bit at a time, and it feels like I'll be doing that for years to come.

It's a whole lot better now that I have a job and am getting paid. Back before then, I would feel this high level of anxiety for days leading up to when bills were due. And they always got paid, either by Lee's check or from the savings account, but getting there just twisted my guts. Now it's more of a low-level anxiety because, while I know the bills will get paid on time, I'm scared something catastrophic will happen to make us unable to pay them. Or even semi-catastrophic. There are no extras, really, that would could just give up in a situation like that. It's all pretty basic. This anxiety is there kind of all the time.

For that reason, I'm considering switching Penelope to another Baby School. I've contemplated a couple of locations, and currently I'm thinking about one place in particular that is on the route between our home and my work, and which costs $55 a week less than our present Baby School. That's $220 a month. That's two grocery trips and then some. That's a nice credit card payment. That's a little wiggle room, at least.

But thinking about switching makes me nervous, too. I like our Baby School. I don't luuuuurve it; it's not my dream come true; but I like it. I like the activities they do. I like Penelope's teachers. I like the friendly relationship she seems to have with them. I don't think the teachers love her and are truly attached to her the way her teachers were at our Baby School in Connecticut, but I think she's one of their well-behaved pupils, and I think they like her. I like that she's used to it and comfortable there. I like that I know what to expect.

It's Montessori-based, which doesn't make as much of a difference for her age as it does for the 3-year-olds and up. I don't know a lot about Montessori, but what I know seems pleasant and fine. I'm not in love with Montessori.

The other day care is accredited through APPLE and is a Florida Gold Seal Provider, whatever either of those means. I liked that our Baby School in Connecticut was accredited through NAEYC, but only a handful of places here have that accreditation. Our current Baby School does not have any accreditation. These other associations that the potential Baby School belongs to seem just fine.

Another thing the potential Baby School has going for it is that it participates in the Voluntary Pre-K program, which means that when the children are 4, the state begins to pay for some of their care, and in exchange, the school teaches to certain standards to try to prepare the students for kindergarten. The percentage of children ready for kindergarten at this Baby School was 86%, 90%, and 76% in whatever the different fluencies were they tested. It has to do with reading, and I don't understand it exactly. That was last year, and the year before they had better scores. I don't know if those are good numbers, but they aren't rated as a "low performing provider."

In some ways, all of that just serves to confuse me. But in terms of finance, the potential Baby School participates in VPK, which means tuition will go even lower at that point, and our current Baby School does not participate in that at all.

I have kind of a nebulous worry about VPK, though: what if it's all just getting the children ready to take those stupid standardized tests that everyone says are ruining our public education system? What if it's just getting them started one year earlier on learning tests and nothing else? What if putting Penelope in a VPK program is actually going to be bad for her?

Oy, THAT is getting into waters where I have absolutely no idea how to swim. And there's probably no point in going there anyway since the plan is to send Penelope to public school, and that's the whole reason we picked this house in this neighborhood: the good school.

But the point brings me to an important level of this whole switching-Baby-Schools debate: Mommy guilt.

When I was preparing to go back to work after Penelope was born, I realized something didn't sit right with me about the day care I had selected during my pregnancy. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, and when I went to visit it, I found a lot of things wrong, stuff that apparently didn't make an impression on me before the baby was born. Luckily, I found our eventual Baby School, where I loved it, but of course that cost a lot more per week. I just sucked it up. That's what happens: you want good care for your kid, you pay for it.

But somehow in my mind, that also means that the only good care for my kid is the most expensive care. Intellectually, I know that isn't true. There's a very popular, very good day care down the road that costs about what this potential Baby School costs (there are complicated reasons I don't want to go there). But I still really have to talk myself into seriously considering switching.

There's also kind of a status thing at our current Baby School. It is Montessori. It is right downtown in a costly location. The other parents seem very successful and all seem to live in trendy, expensive neighborhoods and drive nice cars.

The other one does not have that going for it. Am I a classist? An elitist? A snob? Am I hungry for status? Barf. Please, no.

One thing I wish the potential Baby School had going for it was someone's personal recommendation. One of my friends worked there years ago, and she said it was fine, but it was a long time ago. It does have one glowing recommendation on greatschools.net, though the parent says she wishes it were more secure, though she does not believe there has ever been an incident. For this reason, it seems, she gives it 4 out of 5 stars. But she says her 4-year-old can name the presidents in order.

However, one of my own friends sends her son to our current Baby School, which is meaningful not only as a recommendation but as a resource for comparing notes and discussing upcoming birthday parties or events or sick day rules or whatever.

I visited the potential Baby School once when we first got here. I liked it okay. I felt kind of "meh." I think I wasn't impressed with the tour. I like it when they really give me a tour and tell me all about the place. I think this was one where she showed me the toddler room and introduced the teachers and let us see the playground and asked if we had any questions. I like to be given a show. That may be totally irrelevant to whether the care offered is any good.

The teachers seemed competent, and they were very experienced. I remember that somehow two classrooms were divided by a wall of cubbies or something, not a real wall, and I didn't like that because it seemed to compromise the class size somehow...? Or maybe it seemed noisy because you could hear the kids in both classes. I really don't remember, and I'll have to go back and visit it again. Which I plan to do this week.

It would certainly be a relief, financially. I wish I were more excited about this. Why aren't I? Maybe I dislike having to make a choice like this based in large part because of the financial consideration. That really isn't the only reason; this place would me much more convenient (though the drive to our current day care is a pleasant one, even if 20 minutes longer than necessary each way). Or maybe it is the Mommy guilt that I can't let go of.

One of my co-workers, who has daughters age 14 and maybe 7 says I should just make the switch and stop torturing myself, because Penelope will never be as worked up about it as I am, and she knows because she went through the same thing with her older daughter, hemming and hawing about it for ages until she finally did it and her kid didn't even blink.

I'll go for a visit to this place, I hope this week, and will be better equipped to make a decision then.

Meanwhile, Miss P is treating everything as a phone these days. Spoons, books, puzzle pieces, crucifixes...

It's so nice living in our house. So very pleasant. And it's so pleasant living here in Pensacola. In some ways, it feels like we just got here. We spent our first 5 months in limbo, but now we're here, we're settled in, I have my job, we have all our stuff, we have a routine, it's warm out.... Ahhh. So excellent. And several times a week, I feel struck by how lucky I am to live in such a pretty place. I drive by the water every day and feel lucky. I eat delicious food (far too often at restaurants!) and feel lucky. I feel the sun on my face or smell a coming rain and feel lucky.

Sometimes this is also coupled with an uneasy feeling of impending doom, which is unsettling. But that's probably just residual stress from getting to this point. I hope!

Time for some before and after pictures.

Here is the living room, not too long after moving-in day.


( Still a lot of unpacking to do! )

And that's about it for now! The office is still a huge mess. It's kind of the catch-all room, and it's a room I don't mind being somewhat cluttered with bookshelves and desks and toys. That means the living room and dining room don't have to be. It also means that the stuff in there doesn't all have a home yet. We could really use easier access to the attic, because we have lots of stuff we stored in our attic in Waterbury that is crammed into closets and just chilling in the third bedroom right now. The attic here has just a small crawl hole and no ladder, so I really don't see getting anything up there any time soon. And Lee says the ceiling is very low.

Someone is bugging me to post about what I did for my birthday. I turned the big 2-9 on April 20, which happened to coincide somewhat with the weekend we wanted to have a little housewarming get-together. My BFF Blair and her family came down from Atlanta for that event, and Blair made sure I had a cake with candles to blow out, even though the purpose of having friends over that day was to break in the new digs.



( More pics to be seen. )

Next time, I'll post pictures of the house!

Penelope's latest obsession is Popeye. The sailor. We have this DVD of vintage Popeye cartoons, and she will ask to watch it over and over. It's the new Dr. Horrible. I confess that last Saturday, while Lee and I were working on the house, she watched the entire DVD almost three times. She's watching it right now, in fact.

Yesterday, we got to "Little Swee' Pea," and at a certain image, Penelope pointed to the screen and cried, "Mama! Mama!"



Yes, apparently, I am Olive Oyl.

To double check, tonight when we got to that scene, I asked her, "Who is that?"

Again, she said, "Mama!"

Smartypants.

RIP, Bea.

Penelope barfed in the car on our way to Baby School this morning, so I'm doing the stay-at-home thing for today. She seems mostly her normal self now and even ate some cinnamon raisin bagel twist. We'll see if it stays down.

So I'd like to take this moment to share some Easter photos!



( Eggs and bunnies and chocolate--oh, my! )

Jessicae Quetzaltenango.

(See here and here.)

Well, we're in, and we finally got Internet, and it's all so great. So much space, and so much stuff--and so much to unpack! I've found clothes I forgot I had. It's really a relief, because I was beginning to feel the pinch of not enough decent work clothes. Now my supply is completed anew.

There have been a couple of hiccups. Most notably, not too long after we moved in, the toilets stopped flushing properly. Both of them. They'd flush once, and then threaten to overflow the next time unless you waited several hours in between. We attributed this at first to the massive rain and flooding we'd had in the area; we figured the sewage lines were backed up. But when the problem persisted into the next day's relative dryness, we knew we had to call the plumber. He discovered a blockage far down the drain: a disgusting, dirty loofah. He told us that when the people swapped out the toilets (why did they do that to begin with when the original toilets matched so well?), they probably stuffed the loofah into the tube to keep it from stinking the place up. Then when they installed the new commode, they failed to remove the loofah. Because we were able to get one good flush out every few hours, this didn't show up in our home inspection. Fortunately, the bill was only $172, and it may be covered by our home warranty anyway, less the $55 deductible.

Penelope has started the last several nights sleeping in her own bed, which is AWESOME. I can't remember the last time she slept anywhere but my bed. She's sleeping in her own bed as I type this. And I'd better run off to turn in myself, because it's a quarter to eleven, and I have work in the morning.

Pictures another time.