Nessa's New Daycare

Another big change at our house this month is that Nessa is going to a new daycare. Our church opened a daycare in the unused parsonage on November 6th, and Nessa was the first child to attend.

We had been taking Nessa to an in-home day care not too far from our jobs, and while the situation there wasn't bad, there were a few things we weren't happy about. The biggest problem was that Nessa had stopped napping there months ago, forcing Tami to rearrange her work schedule so she could be done in time to take Nessa home to nap every day. This left Tami feeling like a slave to Nessa's schedule, and made it hard for Tami to schedule appointments and such without missing work. So when the church was finally ready to open the new daycare, it wasn't hard for us to decide to make the switch right away, instead of waiting until Nessa turned 2 as we originally thought we might.

Nessa loves the new daycare. She cried for about 10 minutes after we left that first Monday, and then got interested in what the director was doing and has been happy ever since. For now, Nessa is the only full-time child at the daycare, so some days she's the only child there. Thus she's getting plenty of individual attention: she has had her picture taken by both pastors, had the senior pastor read her a story one day, and seen all the church staff at various times. She has everyone in love with her and thinking she's the sweetest child in the world.

When there are other children there, Nessa has been playing well and sharing, something she was having a bit of trouble with at her other daycare. She likes to "help" when there is a baby there, and is thoroughly enjoying all the arts and crafts projects. She naps well there (2 to 2 1/2 hours a day, consistently), eats well, and is both happy to be dropped off in the morning and happy to see us and leave at the end of the day.

The fact that Nessa's so happy makes us happy. Tami has been able to rearrange her schedule to give herself a day where she doesn't work and can schedule appointments and run errands. I love it when Nessa comes running down the hall to give me a hug when we pick her up. Some mornings when Nessa would rather play, we tell her that she has to get dressed so we can go see Jen (the director, who is there in the mornings) and she says "Jen!" with a big smile on her face. It will be interesting to see how Nessa does when she's no longer the center of attention there, but we hope she will adjust nicely. For now, it's enough to have her happy at a place we trust that is only 3 blocks from our house.