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| Ready for "school" |
I was lucky enough to find a job at a wonderful daycare, which allows me to take my son with me. I was so excited to start - after all, I love babies. I really do. I love the squishy sweetness of them, their acceptance, their curiosity, their inability to sass me. I was also excited for my son. I figured it would be like an all-day playdate for him. He would love it.
He hated it at first, which is why I waited awhile to write this post, because honestly, those first 2 weeks were rough, and I really wasn’t sure I (or my son) were going to be able to handle it.
The babies in my room were just as sweet and squishy as I knew they would be…but, like all babies, the poop a lot. I can handle that. I’m an expert diaper-changer. My son, however, freaked out every time. I would lay one baby down in order to change him, and my son would cling to my back like a spider monkey, bawling with displeasure. I would take him upstairs to the toddler room, where he would scream until I couldn’t take it anymore. And then he got sick - really sick - like ended up in the emergency room getting an IV sick. Even when he got better, he was a complete bear for awhile. It seemed like I was calling someone to come and get him every day, because I couldn’t handle 4 babies when my baby was acting like, well, a big baby.
I freaked out on a nightly basis, when my husband came to pick me up from work. “I’m going to have to put him in daycare so I can work at a daycare,” I cried. “That’ll leave me with - what? $15 leftover after I pay for it?”
He assured me that we didn’t need me to work - but I think we did. Plus, I was finding that, despite my son’s daily hysterics, I liked working. I liked getting out of the house, having a schedule, seeing other adults, and contributing to my family financially. Plus, although I am able to shrug off most “You’re going to spoil him” type comments, even I knew that if I quit a job (and not only a job, but a nice job, a job where I get to hang out with cute babies all day, and the only shit I deal with is literal shit, which is, on the whole, a lot nicer to deal with than the shit I used to deal with in an office setting) because Junior didn’t like it, I was going to be setting us both up for a long line of failures.
My boss and co-workers assured me that it would get better, because frankly, I was embarrassed. My son was seriously the worst-behaved child in the whole place. “I swear he’s such a good boy, normally!” I would almost plead as once again my son began to wail at the top of his lungs. If another baby took his toy, he collapsed. If a baby made a loud noise, he started to cry. My son, who refused to take a pacifier or the bottle at age 4.5 months and wouldn’t have eaten formula even if I had laced it with Hershey’s syrup and offered it to him with a fifty-dollar bill, became a bottle-swiper and a binkie-thief. On top of it all, the pediatrician who had seen him while he was ill encouraged me to breastfeed on demand for awhile, since it would help hydrate him and would be gentle on his tummy, and so we had gone from being a little boy who was perfectly content with getting his breastfed in the morning (and even then we were starting to skip feedings in an effort to wean him once and for all) to a little monster who yanked at my shirt and screamed when I firmly told him no. (It was much harder to wean him the second go ’round than it was the first…go figure. Probably because this time he knew what was coming - little nerd.)
So, I stuck with it. And magically, last week, he proved my co-workers right. It did get better. The first day, I thought it was a fluke. The second day, I was tentatively hopeful. By the third, I was confident that we had done it. We had hit a rhythm. Did another baby take his toy? “If you want it so bad, take it back,” I would tell him cheerfully, and sure enough, soon he was engaging in tug-of-war with the best of them. (We’ll work on sharing later.) Did a baby make a loud noise? Awesome. We can make loud noises, too. It’s not the end of the world when Mama needs to change diapers…and trust me, Mama needs to change diapers a lot. Today, he even spent time upstairs with the “big” kids (18 months and up) with a minimum amount of tears.
He has a little buddy in our room - he’s the son of a friend of mine, and it’s awesome to watch them play. Junior always thinks E. (I’ll abbreviate his name in case his mama wouldn’t want it on here) is chasing him, and they giggle together quite a bit. Once I get E. and Junior involved in something (today it was Junior stacking blocks while E. knocked them down as quick as he could get them up - awesome game), I can focus on the smaller ones, which is fun. I’m not as overwhelmed anymore - there are times when all of them are needing something, but I just take it in order of need and / or age…or holler upstairs for some help. I’ve learned the schedule, so I’m not caught unaware or dismally behind, and by 12:30 it’s daycare-wide naptime until 2:30 or 3:00. I get a break. We do some quick cleaning-up, but after that, I get a break for at least 2 hours. I don’t do laundry. I don’t pay bills. I don’t “take advantage” of the time to clean my toilet (although I do clean the toilet in my room) or put fresh sheets on the bed. I’ve actually had time to read some trashy magazines this week, too…which is good, because since we turned the cable off a year ago, I had no idea what Kate Gosselin has been up to.
Working outside the home is not as overwhelming as I thought it would be, either. As a SAHM, I did 100% of everything household and baby-maintenance-related. When Justin got home from work, I wanted the time we spent together to be quality, so I always made sure everything was done. But he’s pitched in A LOT - a lot more than I even expected, considering he also goes to school, now. Evenings are hectic, because my husband works the night shift and by the time Junior and I get home from work, the kid is ready for dinner RIGHT THEN, and I have to hustle. And then it’s bath time and play time and story time and bed time…which I do have to do by myself because Justin is working.
I loved staying at home with my son for his first year. And I can say with experience that staying at home is a career in itself, with its own unique challenges and joys and heartache and job-related exhaustion, just like any career. You may not be punching a literal time clock, but you still have a schedule that needs to be followed and a boss who can scream and throw a tantrum when you fall behind. And personally, because I did stay at home, I felt an overwhelming pressure to always have a perfectly clean home and caught-up laundry and a home cooked meal prepared every night.
Working also has its own challenges. Organization is key - I can’t put off getting myself (or my son) dressed until 9:30 anymore, and serving a nutritious dinner on a nightly basis still throws me for a loop some days. (Hence the McNugget feast we dined upon tonight.) But I no longer mop on a daily basis, and if a load of clothes from Wednesday remains in the dryer until Thursday night, I don’t obsess about it…too much. And I no longer shy away from asking my husband for help, or a break. I never did before because he worked so hard so I could stay at home, and I think that’s common for a lot of SAHMs. But lately, on Sundays, although I still get up early with the baby, I’ve been going back to bed when Daddy wakes up, and sometimes I stay there until 11. It’s nice. I deserve it. I deserved it before, but I feel more entitled to it now.
So, yeah. It’s official now. I have a job, and I like it, and Junior likes it, too. I only work 3 days a week right now, but it looks like I’ll be going to 5 days a week this spring, and I think we can handle it. I get Junior excited when we go to work…he calls it “cool” (instead of “school”). I’m not sure if he knows what he’s saying, but when we’re strapping him in his carseat and I say, “Are you so happy to go to school?” he says it “cool” with some enthusiasm, so that’s good. And I know he loves Fridays, which is cinnamon roll day. That kid can eat his weight in cinnamon rolls. And, apparently, chicken McNuggets.
Have a great weekend, everyone! (That’s the other awesome part about working…the weekend is actually an event for me.)
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