out with the old

I’m starting a new job tomorrow. And Brandon is starting at a new daycare. We weren’t thrilled with the old daycare. His room was in the basement so each morning I’d have to teeter down the stairs in my four-inch high heels holding Brandon in his infant carrier which weighs about fifty pounds. Every night during pickup they would mop the stairs. It took sometimes ten minutes to exit their parking lot back onto the main street.

The girl in the morning was great and Brandon loved her. But she only worked in the mornings a few days a week. The afternoon girls were lazy and would just talk to each other while the kids cried in their cribs or drooled all over themselves. Brandon always had a full diaper when we picked him up. He was often wearing someone else’s clothes. He once had someone else’s pacifier in his mouth. He wouldn’t eat very much at daycare. Steve and I hated that place.

There is a daycare right across the parking lot from my new job. I went and checked it out. There were much fewer children – not a baby mill like our current place. The convenience of being able to walk over and see him at lunch every day really appealed to me. So we booked his spot at the new daycare. I was planning to march right up to the desk at my old daycare and tell them exactly why I was withdrawing Brandon from their facility. But I couldn’t do it.

I had Steve call. He couldn’t do it either. He couldn’t tell them how much they sucked or how lazy their employees were. He couldn’t even say, “she got a new job and there is another daycare closer to it.” So he told them we’re pulling Brandon out because I am going to be a stay-at-home mom. All last week, every single daycare worker has talked to me about how good it will be for me to be able to stay at home with him, how they did when their children were young, how they grow up so fast and I should cherish these moments with him.

All week I pretended to these people that I’m going to be a stay-at-home mom. But tomorrow I will be a working mom all over again. Maybe one day I’ll be a stay-at-home mom. But until then, I just act like I am to relative strangers.