The Daycare Week (Doomsday Week 2009)

Well, we survived the first week of daycare. As of today no one has made any appointments with the area shrinks. I am hating the morning rush hour drive. This morning there was a major accident in front of us closing our main drag to daycare resulting in an adventure of road rage proportions attempting to find an alternate route during our lovely bumper to bumper commute. I find myself really thanking our employer for not making me drive to work every morning. There are a lot of really, really poor drivers out there. I mean really pathetic excuses for being able to hold a driver's license. No wonder people say flying is so much safer. Apparently anyone qualifies to get behind the wheel. And what's up with the total lack of blinker usage? Is it really that arduous of a task to hit the little handle up or down? I mean just hitting the blinker once in a while could really cut down on the idiocy. Part of the reason the drive is so stressful is our little hotbox of a son is sweating his tail off in his car seat. Those things don't breathe. I already told Carrie we could quit our jobs right now by simply designing a car seat that breathes. Millions! This thing is plastic and has a cushy cover that goes over it and since he's facing the trunk he doesn't get the air blowing from the vents. If we had a fancy mini van or an SUV we would probably have the vents on the roof that could blow down on him but we live in Accord land and don't. In the 15-20 minute drive it takes us to get there he is literally soaked from sweating so he's crying and kicking trying to get out of there exasperating the situation making him sweat more. This coupled with the numerous, what's the PC word I'm looking for here, not jackasses, let's say nincompoops weaving in and out of traffic while putting on their make up while sending that last minute all important text message all while driving with one knee. I'm not sure if daycare or getting to daycare is more dangerous.

At any rate, I don't think we're really satisfied. As soon as you say that you wonder if there would be a situation you could be satisfied in. Oh, I know, he could just stay home with us. That would be the solution we can't seem to get our heads around. We only need to provide two weeks to get out of this place so I think we are going to continue to research options and see what we can find. There are few red flags we've noticed. Today the doctors tell you it's only safe to have your baby sleep on their back. I realize previous years it's been their stomachs or even their side at one time. Every time we walk into daycare all the kids are sleeping on their stomachs. He's also only been there four days and two of those days he's come home with another child's bottle. That's not the worst thing that can happen, but he has his bag with Quentin spelled out on it in size 72 font. The bottles have his name on it. It shouldn't be hard to match one with the other unless you can't read; a possibility I suppose (shudder at the thought). My concern is whether or not they are feeding him the right bottles. I mean if they can't figure out who the bottle belongs to once it's empty how do I know they can figure it out when it's full? Breast milk is considered a bodily fluid, probably because it is, and therefore comes with all the risks of sharing bodily fluids such as hepatitis or the HIV. We certainly don't want our son going to daycare and coming home with some random person's HIV (pronounced like sieve). I again shudder at the thought. He keeps coming home with a rash on his cheeks as well. And the cheap perfume thing is driving me crazy. I'm buying a case of decent cologne for all these ladies to wear for Christmas. If my kid is going to smell like them at least put some cologne on so he can smell like a man. Am I being petty? I don't know ask me when we have child number three. I hear by that time you are a lot more relaxed. Until then I'm giving these people the third degree. Quick update - Carrie just got back and did give them the third degree and they passed. The lie detector test helped us feel at ease. We are probably over reacting a bit so hopefully we (read me) can calm down in the coming weeks. I'm still dousing him in cologne, though.

Quentin doesn't seem to be sleeping too much while he is there. He likes to be held so much at home that he really only sleeps for long periods of time when he's held and that's just not realistic at daycare so he comes home pretty tired and sleeps the afternoon away. Carrie has been taking the family in the afternoon on some nice walks, which the dog loves (he's back to getting two a day!) and it's nice for Carrie to bask in the sunshine as she goes back to 40+ work weeks on Monday. I think it must be a quite a sight with the stroller and our rambunctious giant dog. Our neighbor witnessed this the other day driving home and pulled over to see "if she needed any help." Nope! This is actually organized chaos. It was a nice gesture though.

It's nice that Carrie, the dog and Quentin can be outside. This is some of the nicest weather in the nation this time of year. Every day it's a breezy, sunny, low humidity 78 degrees which will last until late April/early May. We've been spending a lot more time after work on the porch and can't wait for the clocks to change again so we can get more afternoon daylight. There has been some scheming to see if we can get everyone (in one piece) to the beach this weekend. Is it possible to get the dog and Quentin there in one car? We had a vote and decided Lucky is too much of a menace, so in all seriousness I think we are going to take two cars - one for each child. I have tried to teach Lucky to swim and he failed so this may be a big moment in Luckylore. He's a pretty big wuss and it takes him quite a while to overcome his fear. (He wouldn't go outside, even to pee, for about a week after New Year's because of the fireworks). It's ironic because when we walk him our whole neighborhood is afraid of him because of his size and he's so chicken of them they have nothing to fear. At any rate we'll see how he does in the sand and surf. With that I'll leave with a a picture of Quentin making like a rubber ducky coming out of his bath.

Devastating!

I had a great blog that I wrote on my plane ride home on Friday morning. I showed Carrie while I was getting ready to post it and she declared that there was an awful lot of ranting about the government. You know, the same one that ruined the last eight years and is still nursing that hangover this year? She thought we may end up on McCarthy's list and be blackballed from working in the near future. In this economy we didn't want that so I set out to begin editing. Well, it turned out there was an awful lot of government ranting and to take it all out meant I was left with very little so I am starting over.

First things first, I was in Green Bay and one of my clients cancelled on me so I was afforded a few hours of free time and made my way over to historic Lambeau Field. It was about minus ten outside so we were living up to the billing of the frozen tundra. I was able to make it to the pro shop before closing so needless to say Quentin is all set for football season next year. That place is awesome. Even the hangers have the Packer G inscribed on them. (They wouldn't let me keep the hangers). We got some sweet Packer gear. There is a pub upstairs so I got to catch up on my favorite Wisco beer as well as fried cheese curds. You forget how good the cheese is. People make a lot of fun of you for being a cheesehead but I'd rather be a cheesehead then a cornhead. Cheese is much, much better and comes in a lot more variety. I cannot believe you can just run around in Lambeau but it's wide open to the public. Pretty neat. I recommend you go.

Upon returning to above freezing temps on Friday at the homestead we began the countdown to Quentin growing up and leaving the house. It used to be you had to wait until you were 18 or lied about your age and joined the military but in these economic times we need our children to forge their own lives a little earlier. So we spent the weekend cuddling, cooing, talking, spitting (new skill learned!) and generally being a family. The fateful day was this morning. We awoke at 3am to our house guest getting ready to catch their flight home. Who knew they even let planes fly that early? We went back to sleep and got up for real around 6am, which I guess is going to be our new starting time to get everyone ready and out of the house. We've been fortunate that we don't have to commute during rush hour. You can cross that dandy off the list. We are official commuters. Has anyone seen Office Space? That opening scene where the dude is in the car rapping along to his CD sitting in bumper to bumper traffic beating the hell out of his steering wheel because a 110 year old man complete with walker is passing his car on the sidewalk beside him - well, that's what driving in rush hour is like in Tampa. Yes! We are part of the status quo!

No tears were shed on the way there in the car. Jimmy Buffett was playing on the stereo. He's sort of uplifting in your time of need. (It's 5 O'clock somewhere, right)? We did take a few photos of mom and baby before leaving to feed the constant need of mapping Q's all too fast growth. The mood was silent. You could hear a pin drop. It was sort of like when you got picked up from school, before it was out, because you just got suspended and your parents hadn't slammed the iron fist of discipline down on you yet, but you knew it was coming so it was eerily, scarily quiet. That has happened to you, right? Well, we were all sort of afraid of each other. No one wanted to upset anyone else so we sat silently in the car as the sun rose on the horizon without even so much as giving any one of the numerous people cutting us off the bird that so clearly deserved it.

We arrived at the daycare. It was go time. We either sucked it up right now, wrote a way too large check and dropped our son off or quit our jobs, ran back to the car, withdrew all of our savings and immediately made a bee line for the Keys. I tried. The wife didn't go for it. We could've been hippies for life. The Q has the hair for it... We went in and I was holding Quentin and they immediately sent us to the nursery. Carrie was going over the particulars with the teacher while I held a very happy, smiling Quentin, which made me feel really guilty like you're telling your dog you are taking him to the park only to drop him off at the vet to get neutered. When it was time to go and we were stalling a little bit, I couldn't take it any more. I gave him to Care to say good-bye, which meant tears were welling up and I just had to get out of there. It makes you feel like you just sold your kid on the black market for a goat or something. You're getting screwed! I tore out of there and Carrie was not too far behind. The drive home was similar to the ride there. We had a rush of emotions. Do you think it's possible to convince our employer that it makes a lot more sense to take Carrie's salary give it to me, allow her to quit and they would be better off? I actually tried the sell at my 2:30 with my boss. He laughed. Well, at least we got smiles out of it.

Rough, to drop your kid off at daycare. I don't really see that getting any easier either. (Maybe when he's a teenager). Tomorrow's another day and hopefully by the end of the week we won't need therapy. I hope we figure something out because when he came home he was jaded. Granted, it was only for a little bit but he was definitely upset we left him with strangers for the day. He also smelled like perfume. I need my son to be all man here so we need to knock that off. He did have a blow out on his teacher so that made us feel better. We feel like we're sort of getting our money's worth. He also came home with someone's bottle. They tell you to label everything and I do mean everything. We're talking socks here folks and then he comes home with a bottle labeled Jake. Um, hello? Jake doesn't sound like Quentin does it? They are spelled similarily though, right? Geez, I thought this place was called the learning center!?!?

We made it through day one, but only because we have lots of pictures to surround ourselves with when he's not here. These are two of my favorites.

Is the sunshine going to return?

Well, today is a sunnier day. We have gotten over the shock and awe campaign that the area child care providers rained down on us and have redoubled our efforts to put our child into a day care that can remain open for more then a few months at a time. We would also like to find a day care that doesn't just take our money, but provides some sort of service for cashing our check. Any service at all would be a step in the right direction. Interestingly enough this task is more difficult then one may think. After pouring over the spreadsheets we have come to the conclusion, again, that Carrie cannot be a stay-at-home mom so we must come to terms with the fact that smiley, I mean Quentin, will have to vacate the premises by 8 am Monday morning. Carrie did weasel some extra time and will be pulling half days her first week back so Quentin will only be making other people smile for no more then four hours at a time next week. This of course, does not cut down on the cost for Dad. Surprise, surprise. Here is the next great idea. We could start a day care to make money while also selling specialty beer. That way, when mom and dad come to pick up junior after a hard day at work we can save them that extra stop and fill two holes the greater Tampa area needs with one fell swoop; beer and child care. I know at first it seems like this might not be the greatest idea. While you are pondering that thought, though, I encourage you to go grab a beer, take a swig and then think about it. See? Now, that is a great idea. All I need now are some VC's to help with the financing.

We think we have two pretty decent options but first let me say thanks and give a shout out to two family members who graciously stepped forward to fill the child care hole by offering to not only get on a plane and fly to Florida but to help out indefinitely until we found a suitable decision. Aunt Jo, previously of Florida fame, worked it out with her generous family to come down and help out. She is also a former in-house child care provider and is considered some what of an expert in these matters. Grandpa semi-retired Steve also offered his services. He was a bit of a snake charmer getting Quentin to sleep on command several times throughout the Iowa visit. We appreciate both their offers. We did want to find something permanent that we both felt comfortable with and due to the recent economic conditions we found several places with vacancies because families were forced to pull their children due to financial constraints. These places cost a fortune, so we feel their pain. We found two day cares. They are essentially total opposites and I leave it up to my fair-minded wife to ultimately make the decision. One place is your Florida down home keeping it real day care that has been in business for 38 years and uses the term y'all a lot. Now, who wouldn't want their kid coming home every night asking how y'all doin' tonight? They have been in business before I was born so I think their track record speaks for itself. The second place was more of a learning center and didn't appreciate the term "day care." This is a school they matter of factly stated. It was a lot fancier and they didn't use y'all once throughout the visit. Both places had nice people and Quentin would be taken care of. We'll let you or y'all know what we decide this week but they both could open their doors as early as Monday. Unbelievable, but we'll take it. We are officially short on kleenixes so if you have extras send them down because a fairly traumatic event of dropping him off has exponentially increased, well, traumatically.

In case anyone needed cheering up throughout this saga I have attached a picture of Yahoo Serious. If you don't remember Yahoo Serious google the name in images. It will be worth it. This is Q after a bath. That hair will be touching the ground before he'll be able to walk at the rate it is going. He is smiling and talking so much now that it's impossible to put him down. We've stopped reading the paper, watching TV and doing anything else personal because you just want to play with him all day. It will be weird to not have him here during the day.