First Day of Daycare

Monday September 23rd, 2019 // Mid-Afternoon

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. The days leading up to our Asheville road trip were hectic. We had a successful trip which included numerous stops on highway exits in the middle of nowhere to change diapers. And once we made it back home it was like work and life wanted 110% of every waking second from me.

Today, weeks after our trip, is the first real breath of air I’ve been able to come up for. I took the day off from work. Might I suggest that more Mondays and just random workdays get taken off more often. I took today off because today was the first day of our little guy going to daycare.

Yeah, it’s kinda counterintuitive but I had to for my own sanity.

My wife and I wanted to do drop off together which we did roughly 2 hours after I normally leave the house. If I went in then I’d be in the heart of NoVa traffic (something I try desperately to avoid). I also wanted to pick him up early just to ease him and us into this whole thing.

He’s three months old and hasn’t really been away from my wife or I until today. It was…rough to leave him today. It’ll be rough to leave him tomorrow too. And I’m sure it’ll be rough to leave him everyday after that.

Since I went back to work pretty much full-time after the first two weeks of him being here I at least have gotten used to leaving him in the mornings. Not much will change for me except that I go pick him up in the afternoons.

My wife has the hard part — dropping him off each morning.

We’re going to literally the best place we could find. He has an awesome situation right now in that his class size is a whopping three kids total, including him. The teachers seem great and it’s with a reputable daycare company. All these things make it easier to do the whole daycare thing but it doesn’t make it easy by any means.

We’ve been so fortunate that he’s been all-in-all a spectacular baby so far. Every baby is spectacular to their parents but what I’m getting at is that he doesn’t really tire us out and we haven’t had that urge to take a break from him, even just for a dinner out. He’s been so chill.

We’ve heard from friends, Reddit, etc. that daycare is great because you get time back for yourself. And it’s true. But at the same time, neither of us really need that time back. We’re both perfectly fine and happy to spend all our time with him.

But bills have to get paid. And living in one of the most expensive areas in America doesn’t help. Which makes daycare a necessity.

Anyway, not really sure what points I was trying to get across were but I wanted to write something to break the silence and keep the momentum of this site going. That’s all I have for today.

– Josh // Missing my kid