Yesterday early evening, when I came to pick up Kaia from school, she was super excited to see me and immediately started smiling and waving her arms up and down. The teacher had given her some crackers since she seemed hungry, and when I came in, she immediately tried to stuff a cracker into my mouth. My sweet baby is always sharing.

However, I made the mistake of not grabbing the stroller from the stroller room first before going into the classroom, and so I saw her, then went to grab the stroller, and came back. Well, she didn’t handle this well, as she assumed I was once again leaving her, so she started yelling and crying, and the teacher had to try to futilely comfort her. I’m definitely not doing that again today.

I asked the teacher how the day went, and she said it was really good. She said Kaia didn’t eat much of her beets when they were all laid out on the plate for her. This seemed odd to me since she usually gobbles up all her beets and then some. I remember, though, that they basically just dumped all the food from her lunch box onto her plate. And the teacher confirmed she gobbled up all her noodles and meat first and ignored the vegetables. I wasn’t sure if this was an acceptable thing to ask, but figured I’d give it a shot: I asked if she could serve and plate her vegetables first, then after she’s eaten some, then serve her meat/protein/carbs. The teacher said it was a completely reasonable request and that she’d be happy to accommodate it, as well as help her with utensil use.

It’s going to take some time to adjust, of course, but I think the first day and a half have been going as well as they could be. I’ve been told by other parents that daycare can take as long as one to two months to adjust, and it will inevitably have ebbs and flows, with some days when the child is happy to go, and other days when it feels like a death sentence for them. So I’m just trying to go with the flow and ensure she’s as comfortable as possible with meals and snacks she enjoys.

I got up extra early this morning to prepare Kaia’s breakfast, breakfast/snack for the mid-morning, and shower before taking her to daycare. I made sure she had foods for lunch she would definitely eat at daycare given they are her favorites: roasted carrots, sauteed mushrooms, steamed beets, scallion oil noodles, and warm spiced chicken thighs. I put sliced grapes and some banana cinnamon oatmeal fingers into a Stasher bag for her mid-morning snack at the center. I also packed her a veggie cheddar and apple whole wheat muffin, plus two mandarins for her afternoon snack. Chris and I went to drop her off for her first day and get her belongings organized. She didn’t seem intimidated at all. She immediately started interacting with the other kids and was barely phased when we left. It seemed like she fit in immediately.

I also handled it all pretty well. I didn’t even cry, much to the surprise of myself and some of my colleagues and friends. Even though we didn’t plan this that far out, I guess I have had time to let all this settle in. The Pookster is only getting older and bigger every day, so I can’t keep her under glass forever. I already do have some feedback to share with the teachers, though, as I don’t think Kaia finished all her lunch based on the live video I have access to, and I want them to save whatever she doesn’t eat in her Omiebox so that I know how much she ate. I also think they need to give her more than 25 minutes to eat lunch, as I thought there was supposed to be a full hour allotted for lunch time?

I spent some of yesterday afternoon labeling all of Kaia’s clothes and random items we need to bring to daycare: blanket, crib sheet, water bottle, utensils, bib, poncho, clothes. I compared all the supplies against the list the director of the daycare provided twice. This afternoon, I spent the entire time cooking and cleaning all the pots and dishes. I made channa masala, scallion oil and noodles, roasted carrots and cauliflower, and roasted warm-spiced chicken thighs. I prepped the food I planned to pack for Kaia for snacks and lunch tomorrow. I packed all the supplies into canvas bags and stored it in the under basket of the stroller already. I felt beyond exhausted by the time dinner time came and Kaia had to be bathed. It was no wonder I ended up going to sleep early with a headache.

At some point yesterday afternoon, Chris asked, “Is there anything else we need to prep for daycare tomorrow?”

“No,” I responded, confused. “I already did everything!”

Being a mom, while very rewarding, can also be very exhausting and completely thankless. Some days, it would be nice to take a total break and just not do anything. In fact, one of my friends who also has kids said that during fights with her spouse, she frequently threatens to not do anything for a whole day (not sure how that actually works out, though. I’m pretty certain knowing her that this is a very empty threat). Then, we can see how the dads survive those days.

A couple years ago, I realized how onerous daycare could be when a few mom friends of mine were posting on their social media about… how literally every single item you bring into the daycare center needs to be labeled, just short of your child. That means every single clothing item (even down to the last sock or shoe) has to be labeled.

So I ordered a bunch of labels with Kaia’s name on them and had them delivered this week. And when putting them on items like her lunch box, water bottle, and clothing, I realized… wait, how do I get these labels to stick on things like her silicone bib or Stasher bags (for her snacks) when the labels explicitly say they are not meant to be put on silicone items?

I tried using a Sharpie and writing Kaia’s name on the back of one of her silicone bibs. After using it twice and washing it by hand both times, the Sharpie ink was already coming off. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do? I immediately texted my friend, who gave me the label company she used to buy her kids’ labels, and she suggested that she could use her label maker and make a few for Kaia to test on the silicone items.

Friends with kids… what would I do without them??

Because of the ex-nanny’s departure, I’ve also been able to take Kaia to the music classes I signed her up for. On Thursday morning, I brought her to Riverside Park for one of the music sessions. Kaia clearly loves music; she clapped and bobbed her head and body along to the music and used her little “instruments” throughout. She also loved attempting to crawl away from the class, and I had to frequently carry her back to the picnic blanket.

The other funny thing to see was what caregivers came to the class. On Thursday, there were seven of us total: three nannies, two mothers, and two grandmas (at least, this is what it looked like to me). And of the strollers, it was a sea of Uppababy Vistas, plus our own Nuna Triv. It’s always comical to me how amongst groups like this, the stroller type is usually quite homogenous and predictable, even down to the accessories on the strollers. The Uppababy Vista is the most popular stroller on the Upper West Side, if not all of New York. It’s ginormous, which is why it’s so popular, but that also makes it nearly impossible to carry up and down stairs or on the subway without at least 2-3 people carrying it. It’s the stroller for you if you are happy with the size, and you never plan to take it outside of your neighborhood without throwing it into a car. It was never the stroller for us, and it always annoyed me to no end when people would give a blanket recommendation for this stroller, even when I explicitly said that I needed something that could travel well and relatively easily on the subway/trains. I occasionally get questions on how we chose our stroller, and I know the question not being asked is, “Why didn’t you get an Uppababy?”

This afternoon, I took Kaia to her very first theater performance: Flutter, a performance designed especially for kids ages 6 to 18 months of age, which follows the narrative of the changing seasons through experiential storytelling, innovative puppetry, innovative dance, and original music (that’s from the official description). I had been keeping my eye out for age-appropriate, low cost activities in the area that Kaia could do, and this definitely stood out as being one of the most interesting ones, so I signed her up over a month ago. And in the end, it was a great experience. Not only did she do exactly what the director had hoped, which was interact inside the circle they created and play with the props, dancers, and other kids, but Kaia really hammed it up in general: before the performance even started, she went around the inside of the circle, crawling to each family and saying hi and waving. She traded and fought over toys with certain kids. At least half a dozen parents came up to me after to express how cute and social my baby was.

If our ex-nanny hadn’t quit, I wouldn’t have taken Kaia to her first theater experience. So in more ways than one, the nanny’s sudden departure has actually benefited our family. I got to see Kaia be extremely social and interact in a fun theater environment, and it made me realize even more how much my baby is blossoming into a precocious, outgoing, intelligent tiny human.

I contacted the pediatrician’s office with some forms that daycare requires the doctor to fill out. Of course, they replied and said that there is a $25 order form filling fee every time there is a new daycare/school form to complete. How lovely. The one note that they shared only after I called them, gave them my credit card number to process, and then I asked about future forms to have filled out: if I ever request that they fill out one of these forms in the future, and it’s within three days of one of Kaia’s doctor appointments, and I bring the form in for them to fill out and sign, then they can do it without charge. How… weird, yet annoying.

Of course, there are registration fees for daycare/school, as well as deposits. And then on top of that, I need to get a partial refund on the spring session of the music class I purchased for Kaia. I wrote out all the classes she’d taken, plus the ones she can still take, and so in the end, she will have taken eight out of a total 13 classes in the spring session. The music company is willing to only refund 50% of the classes she FORFEITS. Ultimately, this means the cost per class she actually took is higher than I originally thought, but it’s still lower than it would be if we paid a la carte. It is what it is.

I also have had to look into daycare specific purposes, like small food storage containers (they won’t allow any glass containers, so my usual glass jars I use to store Kaia’s on-the-go snacks are out), a lunch box (I cannot believe how many iterations there are of these…), daycare labels (this was a total nightmare; I could NOT believe how many options there were online and all the different price points). I did two searches on Google and Amazon for labels, got annoyed, then texted my friend, who has put two of her own kids in daycare, and she simply sent me the one she used and told me to buy the same ones. I trust her judgment, so I just ordered them to simplify my life.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. I keep telling myself that this is all for the best and that all this effort and annoyance will be worth it in the end. Kaia was going to end up in daycare at some point, so pushing it up a few months would not only save us money, but it would also reduce my daily stress of dealing with her ex-nanny’s constant insolence.