Words I Never Thought I Would Say

I don't want to pull Langdon out of daycare.

Yup - I know, I am shocked and surprised by it as you probably are.

Langdon attends a commercial daycare center. "We" are all taught that this is the most evil option if you must return to work and your child needs to be cared for by somebody else. For roughly the first three months after I returned to work and L was at the daycare I continued to search for other possible solutions - pretty much could we get somebody to come to our home and take care of him. Discovered very quickly this was a very expensive option and was not something we could afford to pay for - for four or five days a week. I was not entirely comfortable with having him go to somebody's home, especially if I did not already know them personally - and I don't know anybody personally who could take him during the day.

So he continued to attend commercial daycare. Over the months the number of babies in the room has steadily decreased. And I use the term baby loosely. When he enrolled there were up to 8 "babies" there, but five of those 8 were already 9 months or older. Even though they are still babies I have a hard time putting them in the same category as a lump of baby plump that is under the age of 5 months and can't sit on their own yet. But I digress....

So back to the decreasing population in the infant room... so all the older babies have graduated into the 1 year old room. The current set up is five total - with two of those five being part time. So most days there is only three at most four babies in there. And the three full-timers are Langdon, Joey, and Jonathan... they are all the same age - within four weeks of each other. Its been fantastic cause they are all learning to crawl at the same time, babble at the same time, and they play together. Plus they also get to do fun things that we wouldn't do at home, like finger painting, feet painting, etc.

We recently found out that dh has a schedule change and will be off during the week Monday through Wednesday. Here is my grand opportunity to pull Langdon out of daycare with the exception of two days a week. Hooray right?

Nope.

I'm sad. Its a pull of cost savings (roughly $50 or more per week if we do 3-day or 2 day daycare) versus Langdon getting the interaction and play time with the other kids. We have been lucky that he's only gotten sick twice, which I attribute to the very low turnover rate in the room - same kids, same bugs, no new bugs = healthy kids. We decided that we're going to keep him home M & Tu and send him in Wed-Fri, but I'm still a little sad that we're breaking up the full-time boys gang. I know I'm being silly but as he's getting older he's having so much fun.

Yesterday I told the daycare people about this change and you could tell the teachers were visibly bummed they wouldn't have Langdon every day of the week anymore. Not saying he's an angel by any means - he can be very particular about some things and will let you know it... but you can tell they care about him alot.

Like I said - its bizarre and I never thought I would be torn/unhappy about having to not send Langdon to daycare all week.