Aimee's workin it

Well Aimee started working again this week. It was inevitable, but I really wasn't ready for it. We had to identify and place Sam in daycare, which has not been our desire from the beginning.
I am tasked with dropping him off in the morning, 8am, and picking him up at 2pm so we get a slightly reduced rate for not having him there all day. I have a pretty easy schedule, so it works out pretty good and I get to give him a snack and try to get him to rest for a little bit before Aimee comes home, we eat dinner, entertain him until his bedtime at 7 when we get to work on other things until we get to bed around 9-10pm.

I would still like to try to find a place, other than a daycare facility, like we have him in now, that may be in some one's home and with someone who could give him more personalized attention. They seem to have a lot of kids at the place we have him at now and with limited teachers, it means that only the fussy ones get the attention. That said, the "teachers", "caregivers", "play coordinators" or whatever you call them at this stage, are great. They do seem to try to attend to each kid, there are just too many to really allow a one-on-one interaction all day.

Sam hasn't been fussy, for the most part, except maybe when I first leave he gets a little pout and wimper. His reports for the day have rated him as content, but when we come to pick him up he is evidently relieved and kinda whimpers about it a little when he sees me. I watched him through the window yesterday before I went into the room to get him and he was just kinda milling around the room at the coattails of one of the main caregivers, Kristin. It looked like he really didn't know what to do with himself. It really made it hard for me to leave him there today.

As a result, I have found it a little hard to concentrate at work. I read a book when Sam was about a month old, well part of a book, called The Science of Parenting. (I should finish that now that he is older.) It talked about the observations that this doctor group had done on brain chemistry of children, through brain scans, as they grew up and were in different situations. One of their conclusions with kids in Daycare was that they were all under stress of being away from their parents, even if they seemed content and didn't fuss during the day. The same stress hormones and indicators were present in the calm, content kids as in the ones wailing and crying for periods of time during the day.

Sam kinda looks at me when I leave with an inquisitive and almost sad look on his face. He seems to accept that he is staying at I am leaving with minimal fuss, but I can just sense that he really just doesn't understand why we are leaving him there with these strangers. I know he will adapt, as kids are very resilient, and Sam seems to take to new experiences well. My crazy analytical, or as my friend growing up liked to call it just anal, mind just can't keep going over what his experience must be like for the two closest people in his life (his caregivers, family, friends, and play pals) give him up for what must seem like forever to his time insensitive mind. He has to get used to new people, doing things in a different way to Mom and Dad.

Please pray that Aimee and I can make the most of our interaction with him in the morning and at night when we are with him that he would be aware that we love and care for him deeply and are only putting him through this because we have no better alternative at the moment. Please also pray God's will with our situation, that if a better place for Sam is out there that He would direct our search to find it and make us aware when we come across it.

I pray that Sam is getting at least some good out of this experience and will come through it with some beneficial life skills and experiences, like making friends, dealing with new experience, how to manage change... I have to trust God will nurture and protect Sam in the way only He can and that Sam isn't too young for it to be beneficial for him.