Daycare For Lili

For those of you who don't know, Lili's daycare situation recently changed. For the last 10 months she has been with New Horizons and we truly loved it there. She was so happy...the teachers were awesome...but for financial reasons we had to find something different. At some point, in order to have more time with the kids, I would love to go down to part time (not sure that the company would ever even allow that)...or maybe find a less demanding position...or...???? Unfortunately that can never happen without some advanced planning and that planning does not include spending $2000+ per month in daycare costs. Lucky for us, the photographer who has been taking Lili's professional photos since she was a newborn, referred us to her in-home daycare provider and we found an awesome place for her! Lili took to her right away and immediately made herself comfortable. Her 1st official day was yesterday (planned before all of this "other stuff" happened), so I was a little nervous about how it would go with me not being around and the craziness that has been invading the Lane household over the last couple of weeks...but she did awesome! Drew said she was crazy happy when he picked her up and the poor thing was exhausted from all of the activity throughout the day. I talked to the daycare lady for awhile on the phone and she said Lili was pretty entertaining. Her new game is to hold something out to someone as if she wants to give it to them...but when they reach for it, she takes it away. Apparently she spent much of her 1st day "offering" things to everyone and then snatching them back! HA! Crazy kid!

In addition to the daycare changes, we also now have the help of two good friends on Tuesdays and Thursdays, who pick Lili up from daycare at the end of the day and entertain her for a couple of hours until Drew can come get her. Before I ended up on bedrest, Drew had started taking mixed martial arts classes twice a week. I think with the stress of his job, beating the crap out of punching bags and his classmates was a good way for him to vent frustrations. Now with being a single parent 24/7 for what could be up to 11 more weeks, that stress relief has become even more important. Luckily we have had some really great offers for help from friends since all of this started and he is able to continue going to his class. Tonight was Miss. Dixie's night to entertain Lili at her house. I call her "Miss. Dixie" because she was actually one of Lili's teachers at New Horizons and that was how I would refer to her around Lili. Anyway, it sounds like everything went great and Miss. Dixie just sent me some pics of their fun time (I will attach one to this post!). Although I am so glad things went well, I got a little teary when I saw them. We live about 45 minutes from the hospital and during the week, it's just not possible for Drew to bring her here, so we're basically limited to weekend visits. Sure, we could "force" weekday visits, but after a long day at daycare, Lili is usually exhausted and ready to settle down for the night. Adding an hour and a half of driving time, plus the excitement of a hospital visit to her daily routine almost seems cruel. As much as I want to see her and as much as I want to be selfish about this, I can't. So...I guess I will just have to rely on pics inbetween visits and hope that she doesn't forget me!

Thanks Dixie for all of your help tonight!