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September 23, 2003
Where does the time go? It seems like just yesterday that I was pregnant with Lily. But Elise is going to turn 6-months-old later this week. Yikes.
Both of the girls are healthy right now. They did have a nasty bug about a month and a half ago. Lily got it first and was out of daycare for a week. It was odd. Mainly just a fever and runny nose. But the fever was 105.
Of course as soon as Lily got over it, Elise and I caught it. That was really scary. Elise had a fever of 104.9. That was very scary for me since she was just over 4-months old. I could only give her Tylenol and not Motrin since she was that young. Every 3 hours we would have to give her a room temperature bath to lower her fever until we could give her more meds. I was fine. My temp was 103 but I was just achy. No other symptoms.
The fall out from their bug was weird. Elise ended up with pink eye, which was not too bad. Lily had a bit of drainage from allergies so I took her to the doctor to make sure she did not have an ear infection. Turns out she had an enlarged liver and spleen (probably from the virus). That was kind of a nightmare. Take your kid in for a runny nose and end up have to get a full blood work up. They were testing for Hep A (even though she is vaccinated) and Mono among other things.
There is a funny story from the lab. The phlebotomist drawing Lily’s blood had his own little office. It had tons of pictures of his young kids. Even a little shelf with family nick-knacks. This was a nice, young dad. He tried the first side and it blew the vain. Lily was not pleased. He went for the other arm. When he got the needle in, she screamed out and mumbled something. I was holding her in my lap so I could not see her mouth moving. The only word I understood was monster. I told her I could not understand what she was saying. The man said “She said get away from me you scary monster, get away.” I tried to explain to Lily that he was not a monster, that he was just a man doing his job and that sometimes things hurt but they are needed to help you get better. She just gave me a dirty look. But little kids recover so quickly. She was laughing with me by the time we left.
Then a week later she had a lymph node on her jaw swell up HUGE. About the size of a very large Greek olive. They said that it was an infected lymph node and put her on an antibiotic (probably from that same virus from hell). Today was the last day of the drugs and it is about the size of a small raisin.
Now to the other major trauma in our lives. We decided to move Lily to another childcare facility. It was an incredibly difficult decision. It was more difficult than deciding to marry my husband or have a second kid. I knew in my heart those things were right. The childcare decision was much more difficult. I don’t know that what I am doing is right. Lily had been at her previous center since she was 6-weeks old. She has three friends that she has known since she was about 5-months old. We just don’t see these people outside of school (except for birthday parties). So I have real concerns about taking her away from her friends.
We were on the waiting list for the new place for about 3-months. I had become concerned about the turn over at her old place. Lily began to cry when I left her and wanted to carry security items to school. When I asked to have her tested to move out of the 2 ½ to 3 year old room into the 3 to 3 ½ year old room the evaluation was not what I expected.
I expected the possibility that Lily was not physically ready to move to the room (they use a different playground), but the teacher also indicated that she was not ready in other areas. This was the third lead teacher Lily had had in probably 5 weeks. The two previous teachers had quit without any notice. It was only after this third teacher took over the classroom that Lily started to want to carry a blanket to school ect. It was that third teacher evaluating her. I won’t go into everything, but it did say that Lily was not using pronouns and she was not talking in sentences. I just about broke down crying. This showed me how poorly Lily was functioning. I am not saying my child is the most brilliant creature on this earth… but she has been using simple sentences since she was about 14 months old. She has been speaking in complex sentences since 18 months and using all sorts of pronouns. (Example of what she said to me when I was taking her to her first day at her new school. “Mommy you are not going to leave me at the new school. You don’t ever, ever leave babies at the new school, especially Lily. It is dangerous.”)
When we talked with the teacher and the supervisor about the evaluation I think it took a little while for what I was saying to register with the teacher. At one point she said “I can only go on what she is showing to me” and “sometimes kids are different at home than they are at school.” I did not need her affirmation that my kid could do these things. The problem was that she all of a sudden stopped doing these things at school after a series of staff changes (the supervisor has known my daughter since she was 6-weeks-old. She knew my daughter did all of the verbal things). Once the teacher understood what was going on with my daughter we developed a plan to help Lily. We agreed to make sure she kept her nap schedule on weekends and have her awake and at school in time for her to be able to have playground time (she was also fighting naps like you would not believe). The daycare was going to work to have one of the teachers (two who were new) bond with Lily. They made a tremendous effort and at our two week follow up meeting, Lily was doing much, much better. They went out of their way to work with us. We did not have any problems. I think the teacher was genuinely shocked by how verbal Lily is.
Then the new center called. There was a space open. I could not decide what to do. I toured the preschool in the current place and the new one. God it was tough. Her current place had responded in a reasonably timely manner to concerns. Lily had been there all of her life. She had friends. Hell… she had said one of her friend’s name before she said Mommy or Daddy.
One thing that finally made me decide to move her was the ratio. Her old place goes by the state standard. At 3-years old it is 13 to one (but usually it is much lower). The new place sticks to 8 to one (but frequently is lower than that). Since Lily was able to get lost in she shuffle of staff changes at her old place at 2 ½ where the ratio is one to 8, I was very concerned about what would happen when she moved to 3-years old where the ratio is higher.
Another huge issue is Elise. The new place only has 12 infants. The waiting list is about 8 months (people are allowed to get on the list when they are 3 months pregnant). The room has 6-weeks to 12 months. They only let 3 kids in for a particular age rage. Our current place has 3 pods of 10 kids. Six weeks to about 5-months, 5-months to crawling, crawling to walking. We really like this set up. We like separating the newborns from the walkers. That was the main reason we did not get on the list when I was pregnant with Elise.
So now we are in the very awkward position of having children at different places and one place knowing we are probably going to move as soon as a spot becomes available. Elise does move up on the list because she has a sibling enrolled.
It is really hard because the first place is within walking distance from our home. In fact I was walking Lily to daycare when I was on maternity leave with Elise. Then the Arizona 100+ temps hit. The new place is about 10 minutes away.
Lily really seems to like her new school. Her teacher said she was talkative on her first day. Her second day seemed to go well too. She is talking about what she is doing at school. That is something that she had quit doing at her old place. At her new school she is already in the 3-year-old room. She is so little compared to the other kids (Lily is about 26 pounds). It will be interesting to see how she is doing three weeks from now when the newness has worn off.
Well that is all for now. Thanks for reading :) Please feel free to post on m TTM board.
Sherry
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