Pajama Day and the Transgression of Social Norms in Early Childhood Education

Today is Pajama Day at Nicholas's school.

I know this because he told me so: 35 times last night between getting home and bed, and then another 35 times this morning. Oh, and when he woke up he was talking to himself: "Today is Pajama Day at school! That's silly!"

Nicholas understands, just shy of three years old, that the norm is to wear "real" clothes to school, and that wearing pajamas is a bit subversive. In other words, he has a more sophisticated grasp of social norms than many of the college students we teach.

Pizza Day!

Nicholas can now spell his very first word, even if he doesn't realize that's what he's doing.

What's the word? Well isn't it obvious? PIZZA!

You see, every Wednesday at his new school is "pizza day." Mommy and Daddy like it because it saves us the trouble of putting together lunch. Nicholas likes it because he gets pizza and there's a song that goes with it. Or at least there is now, since he came home Wednesday afternoon happily singing the song over and over again.

Here are the lyrics, and you should think of the refrain from "B-I-N-G-O" for the tune:

P, I, Z-Z-A,
P, I, Z-Z-A,
P, I, Z-Z-A,
Wednesday is Pizza Day!
Woohoo!

So he knows how to spell one word. Of course, when he sings he slurs just a bit, and so what comes out phonetically is "Pee, zeye, zee zee ay." He'll get there though. And it makes him pretty happy to sing it, so who cares really.

School is Cool!

We're pretty sure Nicholas is sick of us.

On Monday, he starts at his new daycare center, the first time he'll be in school since his birthday in May. Tomorrow (i.e., Friday) we're going to take him over for an hour to get acclimated and meet his teachers and classmates, as well as to turn in some forms. So tonight at dinner we started laying the groundwork, telling him where we'd be going, that he'd meet his teachers and the "new kids," that his school has lots of toys and he'll get to play with them, and that he'll get to play in the water.

The boy went to bed as if it was Christmas Eve. He's that excited. He couldn't stop talking about school at dinner, with a glint in his eye that says that he's ready and eager to go. And it took him a while to fall asleep tonight, as we could hear him telling himself stories about school through the baby monitor.

We hope that the reality tomorrow matches his expectations today, though I must say, it's going to be tough.

Daddy Day Care

Nicholas's day care was closed today for Easter Monday, so he and I are having a fun day at home (so fun that he collapsed into his crib exhausted ... here's hoping for a long nap!). I'd initially planned to run a few errands, like going to Target and the grocery store, and maybe, just maybe, taking him to the zoo—a huge sacrifice for me, if you know how I feel about zoos.

But we ended up doing that one better: Alice came over to play for the morning! Her daycare was closed today too, but unexpectedly, so I agreed to watch her for the morning so Katie could get in some extra work. We had a very fun morning, but I realized about 10:00 that when you're accustomed just to one child, dealing with two is just exhausting.

On the bright side, we had a very good morning! Alice felt right at home immediately, though after about 10 minutes we had a little hint of possible trouble as she realized that her Mommy hadn't just gone out to the car, and was actually gone. But her mood brightened when I showed her one of Nicholas's puzzles (the one with animals), and after that it was almost entirely smooth sailing.  We played puzzles, we played basketball, we rode horsies, we read books, we watched 10 minutes of Thomas the Tank Engine (I just needed them to calm down!), we had grapes for a snack, we had cheese sticks for a snack, we sang songs, we read more books

They also posed for one picture because they had cutely decided to sit next to one another:

From 2011 April

There were some funny moments, which is great because they mostly developed out of Alice and Nicholas interacting with one another. My favorite was the two of them sitting on the couch as above. Nicholas started to rock in order to hit the back of the couch with his head. I looked at him and said, "crazy boy!" Alice got a look of glee in her eyes, started to rock herself, and announced, "I'm a crazy boy too!" Oh, those kids.

They both wolfed down lunch—macaroni and cheese, chicken fingers, peas and carrots, pears, and milk, of course—which was great. Makes life much easier. I realized when Alice arrived that we'd forgotten to bring up the booster seat from the car, which made things a little trickier. But Alice gamely tried to eat while sitting just in a real chair while I scrambled to find something that could substitute for a booster seat (by the way, we've found one reason that it's bad they don't make phone books anymore). I eventually came up with something:

From 2011 April

Don't recognize that? It's a 6-pack of rolls of toilet paper.  Firm yet soft—perfect for a chair!

The morning wore me out, but in a good way. And it did Nicholas in: he's been napping peacefully for two hours, better than he has in several days.

NB: I only titled the post after the awful movie because it showed up in the TV listings while I was eating lunch. I chose not to watch it.

Painful

I told the daycare center this morning that we're taking Nicholas out as of June 1, a necessary step in our moving process. Shaming disciplinary practices aside, we really like the center, and Nicholas absolutely adores his teachers and classmates.

He's going to be very sad when he can't go back there. I predict several weeks of heartbreaking questions about when we're going to see Elliot, Peyton, Meghan, Miss Hilary, and Miss Hannah.

Update: It's Sarah. I just wanted to add that the news has apparently spread through the daycare center that Nicholas is leaving. When I picked him up everyone was coming up to tell me how sad they were. A few of the teachers (and the owner) seemed genuinely distraught. They have shown us over and over again how much they really do love our little boy, who we are now cruelly taking away. Also, Joe is right on what Nicholas' response will be. Every day Nicholas names every single person in his class. And always in the same order. "Elliot and Peyton. Meghan and Clara. Miss Hilary and Miss Su. Miss Lita. Ameeniah! Madeline. Eric." He sometimes doesn't get to the last couple, but he is just so excited to go to school and see them all. I have a serious case of Mommy guilt right now.

Nerdiness

We provide all of Nicholas's food at day care, including his milk. We usually buy a gallon each week and send him with a smaller Tupperware container that we refill.  Because we do that, we have to put a little piece of tape with his name and the expiration date of the milk on it, lest the staff unwittingly serve him sour milk.

Apparently I was feeling a little mischievous yesterday morning (but only a little, as you shall see).  As a Monday, it was time for a new Tupperware, and we were opening a new gallon of milk with an expiration date about a week from now (still with me?).  Because I'm a nerd, I was tempted to label the milk as follows:

Nicholas

Exp. π

Get it?

Didn't actually do it, though.  Alas.

Re-Education

If you go back through the blog over the past three weeks, you may notice a theme: we haven't been home much.  That means that Nicholas has not been to daycare very much at all since Christmas (we counted: 3½ days).

So this morning was a bit of a shock to him, and even more so because the center opened late after an overnight snow/sleet/freezing rain/general slush storm.  When I came back in from cleaning the cars, he was already weeping and grasping at Sarah desperately as she scurried around to finish his lunch and get his jacket.

He stayed calm most of the way in the car, though I could hear an occasional muffled whimper.  But once we got to school he got clingy with me (you know the kid's upset when he does that).  But his friend Elliott was there playing, and Ms. Hilary took him after one quick hug, and then I beat a path out of there as quickly as I could.  No slow peel of the Band-Aid for me.  Just get it over with and get out.  I must admit I felt a little mean and cold (a familiar feeling if you know me), but staying was only going to prolong the maudlin and pathetic display.

Hopefully he feels better this evening, and even more we hope that within a day or two (max) he's back to enjoying school as much as he did in 2010.

Home sick

Nicholas right now looks like he got into a bar fight ... with the cartoon guy from the Mucinex commercials.  Yes, folks, pink eye has struck our household.

It's a strange illness.  It seems like most kids get it at some point, and it's incredibly contagious (so says everyone).  In fact, the doctor's office didn't even want me to bring him in, lest other patients get it.  Instead, the nurse there called in a prescription to our pharmacy, so instead of infecting the kids at the doctor's office, we wandered around our local grocery store for half an hour waiting for the prescription to be filled.

In any event, he seems to feel mostly fine, which is good.  For the intensity of the reaction (it's an automatic out from daycare), it's not a particularly harmful disease.  Assuming that the reliable web resources are, well, reliable, it even will go away on its own within a week to 10 days (though treatment cuts it down and helps prevent its spread).  So his eye looks terrible, but he's relatively happy and able to play.  And he picked a "good" day to get sick, since I was working in Baltimore and didn't have much scheduled because of Veterans Day.  So no sweat to stay home.

Oh, and the advice I got as I was leaving work, from two fellow parents: "don't get it, it stinks."  Good safety tip.  As if I needed another reason to be obsessive about hygiene.

And now, back to Sesame Street . . .

Saving Daylight, Assuaging Guilt

One of the sadder consequences of our schedule this year has been that Nicholas spends far more time at daycare than I think either Sarah or I really would like, but given the reality of our job situation, that's the way it's going to be until May.  We drop him off most days at 7:30 or a little after (and on my DC day I drop him off at 7:25 and run for a train), and don't pick him up until 5 or later.

I've been doing many of the morning runs, and so I've noticed quite acutely just how early we've been dropping him off the past few weeks as sunrise has gotten later—at this point it's after 7:30.  Which means that when we leave the house, it's still pretty dark, especially on a day like today was, with an overcast sky and rain.  And because of the cycle of the moon, last week it was clear and high in the sky at 7:15-7:30, which only underscored that it felt like I was dropping him off in the middle of the night.

In other words, from my perspective the end of daylight savings cannot come too soon, as it will grant a bit of respite from feeling like we're leaving him at daycare quite so long.  Even if it won't actually change the actual amount of time he spends there, it'll at least make me feel better ... until December, when it'll be depressingly dark again.

Dressed for (the Appearance of) Success

Being an academic has many positives and many drawbacks.  We are never away from our work, for example, but at the same time we don't have to dress professionally to go to work during the summer.  This means that for the last three months, when we drop off Nicholas at daycare we're wearing shorts, a polo shirt or t-shirt, and sneakers (or sandals, in Sarah's case).

Does the staff at the center judge us?  Probably not, and if they did, it wouldn't matter (not at these prices, anyway).  But I at least still felt a little pang of slacker-ness when I would drop Nicholas off during the summer, since it looked like I was leaving him at daycare to go spend they day sipping a latte and reading a novel.  I'veis been looking forward to the start of the semester because it means that I will be wearing real grown-up clothes (at least on teaching days).  It's a silly nothing, really, but for some reason I feel better if his teachers think that I'm going off to do Something Important.  Oh well.

What I did not expect was this: I mentioned all of this yesterday to Sarah (it was the first day of the semester), and her response was, "oh yeah, me too!"  Which I guess I should have expected, but it made me feel a little better.  At least I'm not the only one who's crazy (and perhaps a little self-absorbed to think that anyone cares how I dress).

Out of Practice

Well hello there!  Some of you may remember me.  I'm "Daddy," that guy who appeared on the blog only in the third person over the last few weeks.  [Wow: I checked our list of posts, and I have written anything since June 14.  Sheesh!]  But now I've submitted my dissertation to the committee (defense in a few weeks), and Sarah's gone out of town, which means that I now have the time to blog, and I'm required to blog lest we fail to chronicle even a minute of Nicholas's life so that Sarah can see what we've been up to this week.

Anyway, I was going to have a theme for this post, which was being out of practice and out of touch.  It's only been a few weeks, really, since I've immersed myself in the minutiae of revisions, but in that time Sarah took over almost completely in preparing Nicholas for his day.  This means that I haven't really paid attention to what he needs to go to daycare.  Now, I'd be totally able to take care of him at home, feed him what he needs, put him to sleep when he needs a nap, and so on.  But for some reason the idea of figuring out his whole day at 7am was just throwing me.  I guess what I'm saying is that it's funny how quickly you get out of practice.

And now I'm realizing that blogging is also something that I'm going to have to re-learn.  But for now, Nicholas is daycare, and I found a Monday afternoon baseball game on TV (thank you, MLB Network!).  So blogging more can wait.

Back in Business

First, this entire post will be prefaced by an enormously superstitious "knock on wood."

That said, Nicholas seems to be feeling much better this morning.  He woke up perky, smiling, energized, and happy, none of which he had been for the past four days.  We took his temperature, and he checked in at 98.1.

And off to daycare he went, quite happily.

Because amoxicillin in liquid form is quite tasty (Sarah keeps making me nervous by reminiscing about how good it was when she was sick as a kid), Nicholas has had no trouble taking it, in fact seems eager (more nervousness).  So hopefully that kicking in has solved the ear infection problem, and for now he's back up and running, and seems to be on the mend.

Though he did make sure that both Daddy and Mommy caught his cold before he started back on the right track.  Thanks, buddy.

A Little Feverish

This week, we've learned that taking care of a sick baby is hard work.

On Thursday, we got a call from the day care center to come pick up Nicholas because he had a bit of a fever and was not acting like himself.  When the teacher put him down for his morning nap, he screamed and cried, and as she put it, "he never cries!"  So I went to get him (Sarah had student meetings all afternoon) and as soon as I took him from the teacher, he put his head on my shoulder.

Fire alarms went off in my head.  He never snuggles.

Of course, he also looked terrible, pale, drawn.  He was totally lethargic.

When we got home, I put on some TV, and just let him sit in my lap.  After a dose of Tylenol, he fell asleep there for a nap, which he hasn't done since he was about four weeks old.

Anyway, so he has had a mild fever since Thursday, running in the range of 100-102 degrees when the medicine wears off.  So nothing good, but not so bad that the doctor wants to see him (that's at 104 degrees of four days, so if he's still feverish on Monday, in we go).  He hasn't had any other symptoms, so it's not entirely clear what's wrong, but babies get fevers, and it's the body's way of trying to deal with something that when it can't figure out what else to do.  Could be the tooth he's getting, could be a virus, could be roseola ... well, what's your guess?  It's as good as ours.

He's been doing pretty well considering.  Except for Thursday when it first hit, he's been in relatively good spirits, and as long as we manage his fever with Tylenol or Motrin, he's been playing and having a good time.  And today he was down to 98.1, though the medicine may have still been in effect, but that means it's at least working really well, and his hands felt cool instead of hot and clammy.  So maybe, maybe a little progress.

And here's hoping he'll be back to normal tomorrow so we can take him to daycare (where he'd rather be) than the doctor on Monday morning.

Separation Anxiety ... But Not Who You Think

One of the things we'd heard when Nicholas was starting daycare was that the kids sometimes find long weekends hard.  They get out of their routines, and get used to being around mommy and daddy (and in this case, that's a good thing), and forget about their life in daycare.  When you take them back after three or four days off, they regress, and begin resisting again.

Well, we had a four-day weekend last week, partly because of my parents' visit, and partly because the daycare center was closed on Easter Monday.  So Nicholas went back Tuesday (and has started going every day for April), and seems to have had no trouble re-adjusting.  Really, I'd give a lot of money to know his thoughts about life in general, but from what we can glean from a ten-month-old's signals, he loves it there.  I had actually figured that he would not be anxious, but would be much happier getting back to his routine.

So him I'm not surprised about.  But me?  That's a different story.  Out of the blue on Wednesday morning, I was hit with pangs of "wait a minute—I haven't played with Nicholas in TWO DAYS!"  I had gotten used to him, it seems.  Four days in a row of full-time child care, including lots and lots of playtime, seems to have had its effect on me.  Now, of course, if I didn't work we'd have all sorts of other problems (the reasons why I would make a bad stay-at-home parent could fill a very boring but long book).  But it's kind of strange to be sitting at your desk and realize that you'd rather be home playing with blocks.

Routines

I am a man of routines.

Nicholas, because he is very much my son, is a little boy of routines.

This has made the last few weeks an interesting experience for the two of us (and no picnic for Sarah), and my return from the high-flying business traveler world a bit bumpy.  Each time I've come home from a trip, he's been happy to see me, but I think this last trip did him in a little bit.  Sarah left him with me yesterday to go to an Ash Wednesday service, and instead of a "yay, Daddy time!" response, I got the tears and sobbing that usually accompany leaving him with a babysitter.  He still thinks I'm fun, of course, but it may take him a little while to re-adjust to having me around instead of Mommy.  I've got him all day tomorrow, though, so he may have to re-adjust fast!

Meanwhile, I'm trying to re-adjust to the routines of life as well.  In particular, I need to learn the rituals and preparations associated with day care.  He started at the beginning of February, and since then, I've either been away or Baltimore has been under a massive snow/blizzard/"Snowmaggedon" warning (in which case day care is closed).  So I really have no idea what he has to take with him to the center, other than that he needs food and some bottles.  Sarah seems to have come up with a very good system, but she's already got it figured out so smoothly that I'm having to play a lot of catch-up just to get the hang of what he takes, what gets left there, when things come home, and so on.  I'll get it, of course.  And now I have the feeling that once Sarah reads this I'm going to be put in charge of getting his stuff ready for day care until I've internalized it, but so be it.  I should learn, right?

Anyway, I guess the point of the post is that I've been thinking about routines a lot recently, largely because we haven't had any.  The two storms, and the trips I've taken in the last three weeks, have thrown all of us just a little out of whack (okay, some of us more than a little [raises hand sheepishly]).  But we'll get it back, or create new routines, or whatever it takes.

By the way, if anyone is curious, I'm home now basically for good (I think), and will not have any news to report on the trips for some time.

Alea iacta est

Nicholas is now enrolled for day care, beginning on February 2, two days a week.  Please provide moral support and encouragement in the comments for a very shaky and nervous mommy who's having a little withdrawal crisis.

[Ed.: Title translation: "The die is cast," reportedly attributed to Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon, bringing his army into the territory of Italy (a major no-no in Roman tradition) to overthrow the consulate.  In other words, there's no going back now.]