Twas the night before...

One of the best things about not being able to sleep very much is this...
the view out my back deck early in the mornings...when the rest of the world is snoozing - and the dog just HAS to get outside to help himself to apples from the apple tree go potty - at least I see this...






I wish I could say these photos were altered but sadly - I've only made it through the first 6 classes of my 14 day online photoshop class! blerg!

Tonight's the night - you know - the night before the big day. What big day? The big last day at our current daycare. ugh. I cannot even begin to put into words how emotional this has been for me. I can't say I'm surprised at how emotional this has been - but I can say I AM surprised at how flippant people are about who watches their kids. I'm actually shocked at how many people think switching daycares isn't a big deal.
We had kids to be parents - not to dump our kids off on someone else to raise...I wish we didn't need daycare at all but the sad truth is we can't do it alone...and in all honesty - they get way more out of daycare than I ever imagined they would...and more than I can give them at home too -

We've been so blessed with Lisa as our provider - she has taken great care of our kids and she is closer to our kids than any of our own family members are. Where we see the grandparents once, maybe twice a year - the kids spent 4 full days a week with Lisa - She has opened up her home to our children and has loved them for who they are - for who we are.

Lisa knows that Hails prefers dresses to pants or shorts and in fact, will sometimes wear the same dress two days, ok, three days, in a row. How she sometimes wears her nightgown all day long and thinks it's better than any old dress could be. How the sparkly green velvet fur lined Christmas dress is just the right thing to wear on a hot July day. She knows that pretty much the only meal of the day H eats is breakfast, that she doesn't need to take an afternoon nap ~ that she's a BETTER behaved kid when she doesn't get forced to fall asleep only to be woken up 20 minutes later because it's time for snack.

I love how every morning we are greeting at her door at 6:30am where she takes my cuddly little boy from me and he snuggles into her while I go off to make a dollar. How she puts up with his crazy up and down mood swings and his occasional 'forgot to mention he had to go potty' days...
How she got our kids to give up the binky at one year of age...how we get a hand written note every day telling us exactly what they ate (or mostly in our case - didn't eat) what they played with, what times they went #1 or #2, and what their demeanor was...i.e.: great helper with the baby at daycare, had a time out for hitting his sister...

I love opening the bag at the end of the day and finding a stack of pictures of the kids playing with their daycare friends be it at the park, celebrating someone's birthday or just hanging out ~
I love knowing a full month in advance the breakfast, lunch and snack schedule - I won't serve corn dogs tonight knowing that she is serving them tomorrow for lunch - ok...so that's a lie - I will too - since it's one of three things that our kids eat - but still - I will know that tomorrow night they won't be starving because they actually will eat what is for lunch tomorrow.
::sigh::
We've expected, and had, nothing but the best for our babies...

While I'm confident that we have found a great new daycare, incidentally, one that will cut out approximately 50 miles a day of driving (round trip) it is still very hard to let go. I am imagining that this is what a divorce feels like ~ and it's hard. So very very hard.

Lisa has promised us to watch our kids from time to time - so we can have a date night (did you know it's been over 7 months since the hubs and I have gone out alone? something is wrong with that!) or to provide back up or emergency care for us.
I really hope that she can because we hate to lose her completely ~ While the kids were excited to be 'the new daycare kids' at first - they have since regressed - H telling me she's not going, etc etc.
We've done a couple of drop ins over the past couple of weeks and I am comfortable with the home, the provider and the other kids, I'm just feeling anxious for how our kids are feeling about this big change ~

I'm just so glad they have each other to make this transition
Now, who's going to come to work with me that first week day?

The kids ~
...together they'll be fine -

See here? They are dancin' on the deck - Hails picked out a Snow Princess Costume at Once Upon a Child the other day - She'll NEVER wear it come Halloweener - but for $8.00 - instead of a toy...I'm all over that!