Showing posts with label daycare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daycare. Show all posts

Friday, June 27, 2008

Let them have cake!

I must have heard incorrectly. There wasn't leftover cake today, but another party! Mateo got to participate in cake and ice cream, and he received yet another party gift bag favor thing.

And he didn't take anything home with him today.

Go figure.

Deny my child, see what you get.

I picked up Mateo yesterday, and when I got there, I noticed the parents of one of the little girls was there and it seemed like they had been there for a bit already. When I looked in Mateo's cubby, there was a party gift bag. Now it made sense. It was the little girl's birthday.

Right after I made that deduction, one of the daycare ladies told me about the party and how there was cake.

"Since we didn't know if Mateo could have cake or not, we put him in the high chair (read: locked him up) and gave him crackers (read: you can't participate in cake fun, you loser!)," she told me.

"Oh." I said. "Well, he can have cake. For the next time," I told her.

"There is plenty left over, so he can have some tomorrow," she said.

"Okay," I said. "Good."

Then I thought about it. How mean is it to locked up a kid, not allowing him to participate or at least eat at the table with the other kids, and having to eat crackers in lieu of tasty cake? My poor baby. Sad, very sad indeed.

At some point Mateo had grabbed a baby rattle and was lugging it around with him while I held him. I knew he had it, but by the time we left, I didn't think about it.

When I put him in his car seat, I realized he still had a grip on it.

That's what they get for not giving my kid cake. Locking him up as if he were a criminal. Now he's resorting to crime and stealing daycare toys!

(I brought it back today and told them he took it and it's dirty and needs to be cleaned.)

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Kids will be just kids - right? RIGHT?! Tell me I'm right.

I have a slight aversion to kids' spit, slobber, boogers, germs, cooties, pee, poop and throw up. Unless it's Mateo's. Well, except for his throw up. I still have a hard time with his throw up, especially when it's cottage cheesy and smells funkalicious. Okay, now that I've gotten everyone all grossed out, I'll proceed with my story.

I dropped Mateo off a bit later than normal due to him waking up at 3am and not wanting to go back to sleep until he had a belly full of milk, which was at 4:30am, and then he slept a luxurious additional 2 hours after that while I tried to get ready and start working.

When we got there, there were three other toddlers already sitting at the “food” table, eating various snacks. Mateo is used to being dropped off when there are either no other kids or one or two wandering around, so he acted a bit shy at first, then he walked over to the table. There was one empty chair so I grabbed his snacks and poured him some on a paper towel.

While he was quietly eating, like the innocent child he is who never ever stands on top of tables, bookcases or toys, or pushes or hits other children for that matter, I went over to the desk to fill out his day form. I turned myself so I could see what the innocent one was up to.

Right when I turned, a little girl sitting next to him reached over, grabbed a puff from Mateo’s pile, and put it in her mouth. He got upset because he’s too young to get that sort of thing, and gestured at her mouth like, “Hey!!! You stupid girl! Give me that back!!!! MINE!!!” The little girl saw me eyeballing her.

What did she do?

That’s right, because no one will ever notice this move; she reached into her mouth, pulled out the soggy, wet puff and put it back on Mateo’s paper towel, next to the pile of dry, fresh, untampered puffs. Mateo, being the 16-month old that he is, reached toward the wet, soggy puff. I was rushing in slow motion, saying, “Noooooooououououououoouuou...
….ddddddoooonnnnn’tttttttt doooooo tttthhhhhhaaaattttt!” without trying to look too crazy.

I got to the table faster than Mateo could pick up the soggy puff and put it in his mouth. The little girl looked at me all innocent-like. She was told by a teacher to move her puff-stealing butt and go play. She refused. I said that she took one of Mateo’s puffs and he’s a bit weirded out now (Okay, maybe I was. He seemed perfectly content eating a soggy puff like the little baby bird he is.).

The teacher then said that she thinks she can do anything she wants because her mom lets her do anything she wants.

Ahhhh, I replied.

While this may sound like a mean thing to say to another parent, I happen to really like this teacher because she tells it like it is to the correct people (my husband and I). As long as she’s not saying mean things about Mateo, or as long as I never hear them, then I’m good.

The little girl was then removed from the table. She ran off in a crying huff while Mateo sat innocently (he’s an angel, really, he is), fearing that some other brut of a toddler was going to come along and steal his puffs, eat them, regurgitate the puffs and plop the soggy mess back on his paper towel.

I plunked a puff in his mouth, kissed him goodbye and left before he flipped out over my departure.

Friday, June 06, 2008

I'm paying what for daycare???

Last night my husband and I went to the third and last Kindercare in our city because it was "open house" night for prospective parents. After a few incidents during the two weeks Mateo's normal "teacher" was on vacation, we thought it would be in his best interest to check out this Kindercare to see how we felt about it and maybe start planning a switch for Mateo.

We pay an extraordinary amount of money weekly for Mateo's daycare. It's a necessary evil, and only because we own a condo that has now depreciated so much that we can't even sell it so one of us can stay home with Mateo (Ya California housing boom! Booo bubble bursts!) while either living in a big three bedroom apartment in a fantastic apartment complex OR while living in Oregon or Washington and living in a nice condo or townhouse that costs way less than what our stupid condo cost us.

(I don't regret too many things I've done in life, but buying this condo is one of them. I hate you condo!!!)

Anyway. So we pay a ton for Mateo's daycare. And we've been doing so for a year now. And it's been really hard managing money and debt and all that good stuff. But we've been doing it. Every week. Every. Single. Week.

At the open house last night, we were given a price sheet. For the toddlers, the fee listed was roughly $111 less than what we pay now. That's $444 more in our pocket each month. Or $444 less debt. Depends on how you want to think about it.

Needless to say, my calculator brain kicked in (it only rears its calculator head when I'm trying to save a dime, any other time I can't do math worth a piece of poo) and I started thinking about how much we'd save monthly, yearly, and how it'll go down even more as he got older, and then my ovaries started aching again, and I thought, maybe, just maybe we could have another kid, and have a condo that I hate, and have daycare, and still eat!

Then my husband kept saying how he didn't like the look of the daycare, you'd think they would have renovated the building when it was changed to a Kindercare, you'd think they would have cleaned up for the open house. And I couldn't stop the faint urine smell from permeating my nose.

I think my husband's expectations are way too high, but I do understand where he's coming from because I wasn't too impressed with how Mateo's current daycare looked when we first checked it out. Now I don't notice anything because there really isn't anything to notice. You can't clean up ever teeny tiny speck of dirt each and every day. Come look at our bedroom if you don't believe me.

We later found out that since Mateo isn't 2 years yet, the fee would be higher than what was listed on the paper, but still less than what we pay now. Then we realized that we don't even know how much the fee will be when he does move to the toddler room at his daycare (set to happen some time very soon), nor have either one of us paid a lick of attention to the condition of the toddler room the few times we've been in there, nor do we know what the student to teacher ratio is in the toddler room (this is important because if the ratio is higher than in the infant room, we get a 10% discount! - something else I remembered while my wheels were a-spinning last night), and basically we can't make any decision until we figure these things out.

We've got some thinking to do. And some questions to ask. And for me, some money to try to save.

And a little boy to keep happy, which is most imporant.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

When your kid's face is bright red, that means he's overheated.

Mateo has been slightly sick since this weekend; mostly he has an annoying phlegmy cough, but he did have a slight fever Monday night. By yesterday he was fine, just still had the cough, which won't go away for a couple of weeks.

My husband dropped him off at daycare, and he, being the bigger worry wort of the two of us, called around 2pm to see how Mateo was doing. He was told by one of the daycare ladies that he wasn't doing too well and that he didn't want to eat. At the moment he was sleeping, and had been sleeping for two hours. There was mention of him not acting the same either. Especially outside. My husband was worried and felt Mateo was taking a "turn for the worse." I decided I should probably leave a bit early to go get him, just in case something was wrong with him.

I walked into the daycare room, and Mateo was being sat down at the little toddler table, with a bottle thrust into his hands. From the door I could see Mateo's face was bright red. From past experience, we realized that Mateo doesn't do so well outside in the heat. Yesterday went as high at the 90's or maybe a little more. Today may go to the 100's. The first thing I thought was: He's overheated and that's the only thing that's wrong with him.

The lady who was in charge of him that day told me her spiel about how he wasn't eating, and this and that and on and on, and I listened, all the while thinking, he's too hot, HE'S TOO FREAKING HOT!!!! Then she said, "...and it's not the heat." Like she read my mind.

Hello? It's not? We're in a heatwave! Who let's their small children, who can only communicate on a basic level of grunts, nos, thats and points, outside to run around and overheat? My kid overheats by just laying on his side for too long when sleeping!

I like to give the ladies at daycare the benefit of the doubt, so I just left and packed Mateo into our car, turned the AC up full blast and got him home. When we went inside our condo, I took his shoes and socks off, and then his shirt. Then I turned the AC on. After about 10 minutes of being cooled off, the color of Mateo's face turned his normal shade of swarthiness, and he devoured a banana I fed him. I waited a bit after the banana, then started getting his dinner together. He pretty much pigged out like he hadn't eaten for days.

There was nothing wrong with my child except TOO MUCH HEAT!

Today I wrote on his paper that he can't go outside today or tomorrow, and then told the morning lady the same thing. She agreed that it's not good for the little ones to go outside, and said she'd make sure everyone knew. She also said the older ladies "don't think" when it comes to stuff like that.

My goodness. Heads will roll if my kid goes outside today. And I'll know. Bright red face = Mateo went outside. And they'll get theirs. Oh yes.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

I don't like this. One bit.

A while back a friend and I had a discussion about how we'd feel if a man worked at our respective daycare centers. My first reaction was: Hell-to-the-no way. NO WAY.

Then another person told me about a time her daughter was spending the night at a her (perons I know) friend's house, and how the husband, whom she (the person I know) knows pretty well, gave her (the person I know) daughter a bath. And we both felt this way: Hell-to-the-no way. NO WAY. She said her daughter would never spend the night at her (the person I know) friend's house again.

Pronouns are tricky.

When I asked my husband how he felt about both topics, he was sorta, well...I don't see what's wrong with it.... I'm assuming partly because he's a man and I'm talking about men and he's got to stand up for his man power. Or he just didn't see the weirdness in it all like most women would.

Personally it gives me the creeps that any man would want to work with very small and defenseless children. And yes I'm stereotyping to a certain extent. I'm sorry, but I trust women WAY more to take care of my child and not do anything creepy with him. I'm not a statistics junky, but I'm sure if I looked it up, most of the child molesters caught and registered or even accused would be men. And creepy men at that. Big fat creepy men. Women, for whatever reason, prey on teenage boys, and since I don't have one of them yet, I'm not going to worry about it until that time.

So, to my dismay, when I walked into my daycare this morning to sign my son in, a man was in the office being told all kinds of stuff that wouldn't be said to a parent, so I had to assume he was a new hire. I told myself that perhaps he's a corporate exec or something, or, better yet, a journalist! Ya, that's it. And then I promptly forgot all about it.

When I picked up my son, and went into the office to sign him out, the man was still there. Lumbering around the tiny lobby area while the center director talked to a perspective parent. He eyeballed me. I ignored him. I was already getting whiffs of creepy dude from him. He asked me how I was, I said fine. I signed Mateo out. I left.

To my DISMAY, the parent wanted to see the infant/young toddler room, so here comes the parent, baby of parent, center director, and lumbering man.

He didn't know what to do with himself, so he came over to me and said, "How's blahblahbhhshahahhh?"

I was so put off by his fat belly, his geeky glasses, his just utter ickiness for the fact that he wanted to and is working at a daycare center, that I didn't hear him.

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"How's the little guy doing?" he repeated.

I looked down at Mateo, whom I was holding while he bottle fed himself (my kid is slow on the uptake and yes, still needs a bottle here and there), and saw his cute little pudgy, smiley, happy face crumbling. The whine began deep inside, the cry was let out, the fake tears dripped.

"Um, I think that's an indication of how he is," I said. DRYLY.

"Oh, ha, ha," he said, still standing and staring.

Miss J, Mateo's teacher, piped in and said that Mateo wasn't used to the man because he was new. As in, get away from him, you creepy child predator and why the heck are you even here, you don't belong here, go away, and go away fast. At least that's what I heard. Didn't everyone?

So he walked away and found another small defenseless child to torment.

Simply put:

I do not like this. I do not like this at all.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Wow. I love Mateo's daycare!

Mateo was sick all last week, and I called almost every day to his daycare to tell them he wouldn't be coming in. At some point my husband asked if we only pay half the fee since he wasn't there the whole week, to which I responded: No. It has to be planned with a few weeks notice. That's just how it is, per the agreement I signed, I'm not even going there (although I would love to only pay half of his huge-ass fee darn those corporate daycares and their money grubbing...oh, lost my mind for a second).

So today I decided to pay his weekly fee. I opened the e-mail that has been sitting in my inbox for a couple of days, and low and behold....it says we only owe half of what we normally pay. I went online, and yes, that's what it says. And that's what I'm paying. And I'm not about to ask any questions.

Take the goodness as it comes. Thanks, daycare!

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Number 1 question I'm starting to hate (and the close second).

1. Does he sleep all night?

and

2. I bet you miss him, huh?

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The saddest thing said to me in awhile.

"Mateo needs to learn I'm the lady who takes care of him during the day, and you're his mommy."

- Miss Joanne, Mateo's daycare teacher lady who takes care of him during the day and spends more time with him than I will - beginning next week.

And I'm paying them to do this? They should be so lucky for the privilege.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Mateo's going to daycare

Today I signed up Mateo for daycare. I thought I was going to cry at some point, but I didn't. I probably will later on. Mateo was very quiet today as well, which either means he's spending time growing, or he knew what was going on and is very sad that his mommy and daddy are going to stick him in daycare.

Sniffle.