Best Daycare Ever

  

I have the best daycare ever.  No, seriously.  I do.  Managing what my daughter consumes while we are together is generally easy.  I control what comes into the house, and I am the only person who has to deal with any meltdowns over not allowing inappropriate items.  Figuring out how to manage her diet when she is outside of our home, is I’m sure where every parent begins to worry.  I am a full time working outside of the home mom.  I also have another child, 8 months old.  Effective the beginning of August, both my children are in daycare 5 days a week, from about 6:45 AM until between 4:45 and 5:45 PM.  They are in the exclusive care of someone else, for the majority of their waking hours.  And I absolutely must rely on them to help me in my mission.  

The daycare that we attend provides just about everything you could need.  Food, diapers, wipes, snacks, lunches, pull-ups.  I bring the kid, and for the baby I bring the bottles, and that’s about it.  But since we started down this path, the facility provided food has been a major obstacle.  A) Are they ‘safe’ for my daughter to consume, without regressing to our 2.5 hours bedtimes?  B) I pay good money to have all of these things included in our tuition, for many reasons, but not the least of which is to eliminate something ELSE I have to do when I get home from work in preparation for the next day. 

As we test just how much ‘non approved’ foods she can tolerate, and where I can take advantage of these benefits, and when I need to make alternative arrangements, I’ve been providing a lot of her food.  I’ve sent in approved snacks (that is easy to do once a week).  And on the days where the lunch is particularly questionable, I send in her lunch.  But that is just the daily obstacles.  As any parent with a child knows, that HARD days, are the ‘special’ days.  The day that another child’s parent brings in something for their child’s birthday, for example.  Or like the situation I encountered today, the center does something ‘special’ to celebrate the summer.

Today, at school, they brought in a Kona Ice truck.  What is a Kona Ice Truck?  It’s a traveling Italian Ice truck.  I didn’t know until I googled it myself.  2 months ago I would have been excited for the treat, and thought it a wonderful idea.  This month, I cringe.  A) Artificial colors.  B) Artifical Flavours.  C) Don’t get me started about the sugar.  

So after learning (about a month ago) about this event, I set out on my mission to ‘deal’ with this.  I actually found a company that would provide approved snow cone syrup.  So I shelled out $16+ Shipping so that my daughter could be ‘normal’ with the rest of the kids.  I spent yesterday looking to see if the order had shipped, and then I spent last night panicking because I realized TODAY was the Kona Truck visit.  And since the syrup hadn’t even shipped, there was NO way it would be here for TODAY.  So, in desperation I took an approved pear juice box, and shoved it in her lunch box.  There.  I thought.  She can dump that on her ice.  Satisfied with my diversion, I went to bed.  And this morning, my husband brought the kids to daycare.

Dutifully this morning, I e-mailed the center when I had a moment to let them know my plan.  And to EVERYONE’s HORROR… was faced with the response of:  “She saw it during breakfast, and already drank it.”

Let me stop for a moment and interject.  THIS is not the fault of my daycare.  THIS is the fault of severe miscommunication (apparently) between my husband and myself.  And the poor teacher that opened didn’t even have a chance, since she hadn’t been a) warned it was in there, and b) been told it was for the Kona Ice.

At any rate, with 45 minutes until the Kona Ice truck was to arrive.  I received an e-mail from the director of the center (the names have been changed to protect my angels):

“Carol went garbage digging and Karen is en route to Basil Bandwagon (store).  See what you miss when you leave your desk!”

They were replacing my consumed pear juice box.  I sat at my desk and let a couple tears form in my eyes.  I had always known I had the support of the daycare, but this going above and beyond what I ever imagined to show their support of what I was doing, was just more than I could comprehend emotionally.  So like I said.  I have THE.  BEST.  DAYCARE.  EVER.

And tonight, I can talk to my daughter about the exciting visit from the Kona Truck, and continue to enjoy my daughter, instead of cry because I lost her over an Italian Ice.

To my daycare.  Thank you.  A thousand thank you’s would NEVER be enough to repay what you have just given our family.