you should see the other guy

As you can tell by the last picture in this series, while I'm still a little traumatized by what happened, Elias is pretty much over the scratching attack that occurred toward the end of our make-up music class this morning.  He and another boy about his age, as far as I could guess, were happily trying to break into the childproof lock on a t.v. stand in the room where the class meets when all of a sudden this other boy attacked Elias.  I'm not sure if Elias pushed him or tried to interrupt something he was diligently working on (i.e. I'm sure there was some rational explanation...at least as rational as things get when you're 20 months old), but next thing I know this kid is downright attacking Elias - scratching at his face as if he were trying to claw his eyes out.  It was unbelievable.  I literally had to pull this kid off my son, yelling "stop" over and over again.  Elias was fine after about 30 seconds of consoling, but I think the thing that upset me more (before I could tell just how badly he'd been scratched - the kid removed skin!) was the fact that the woman in charge of this kid (couldn't tell if she was his mother or nanny) didn't say a word!  She didn't ask what happened, didn't offer up any apologies on the kid's behalf, nada.  I mean, I understand things like this are bound to happen (although, naive as I may be, I'm still a little shocked that an under-two could be so brutally aggressive), and I don't exactly expect a 20 month old to say he's sorry, but I do expect the caregiver to say something.  It takes a village...until your kid is the one who did something wrong and then we all ignore each other.  Nice.

Needless to say we won't be visiting that class for any future make-ups.  Today's make-up is actually for this week, when I'll be taking Elias to daycare to make up for the Monday holiday, but we missed last Friday unexpectedly when Elias woke up with a raging ear infection.  Man, this kid just can't get a break!  Despite all this and the fact that his beloved Daddy is out of town for much of the week, he's been in pretty great spirits the past couple of days, going incredibly easy on me yesterday and still working on an epic afternoon nap right now.  It's like they know when there's only one parent around they can only be so difficult.

Guess I should wake this kid up if I want any evening time to myself!

19 months

So much for that New Year's resolution to blog more often, huh? Before this kid rounds out his 20th month, I figured I'd better jot down a couple of memories from month 19. Two words: daycare success. I think it's telling that I waited an entire month (plus) to mention anything about how our transition to part-time daycare was going, always worried that sharing some success with the Internet will surely jinx things. But I think it's safe to say Elias surprised us all last month. By mid-way through week two he was walking to Eryn (daycare provider extraordinaire) with open arms. There were, of course, some tears during week one but I think the worst day involved about five minutes of whimpering on and off after I left. Naptime was a bit of a struggle for the first week but she still managed to get almost an hour out of him early on and more recently he's been sleeping for about an hour and a half or two, on average, which is pretty remarkable since I can't even get him to do that some days. And he naps on a mat, on the floor, sans sleepsack, with other kids in the room! Incredible. It's like he's two different kids; daycare Elias and home Elias. But I am, of course, happy for it.
So what was different this time around? I think it's a combination of a number of different factors. He's a couple months older and perhaps our November, one-day-per-week experiment did indeed coincide (or bring about?) a separation anxiety phase. That seems to be going better in general, although he continues to have difficulty understanding the concept of a work-from-home Daddy. Visiting together the week before and hanging out for 10-15 minutes at drop-off during the first couple of weeks may have helped Elias see Eryn more as one of Mommy's friends and less as a stranger. And his 3 days per week schedule is a lot more consistent and regular than Mondays only, allowing that transition to happen a little more quickly, as I hoped. Plus, I think I had a better feeling about this arrangement from the start which I'm sure he picks up on.

As for me, my three days have been pretty well occupied with drop-off and pick-up (although Neal has started taking care of pick-up about one day a week, so that helps), maintaining my two Etsy shops (here and here, if you don't mind the shameless self-promotion), and just generally catching up after 18 months of very little me-time. For example, I used a gift card I got for my birthday last October (shopping with a toddler is impossible!) and went to the dentist for the first time in almost five years. I think about Elias constantly and have days where I really, really miss him. It still feels strange to not structure my day around his every whim and need and I'm finding that I don't love working from home, especially since I have to share my work space with Neal and our two increasingly neurotic cats.

That said, our now somewhat limited time together is far from tension-free. Daycare days are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, so Tuesdays have been interesting. Yesterday was the first really pleasant day and the three or four non-daycare Tuesdays before that may have been coincidence but I wonder if it's confusing for him to have this one day on, one day off, two days on sort of schedule. Fridays, on the other hand, have been pretty great - I think maybe we're both ready to hang out together by then and it's probably not coincidence that that's the day we have our one structured activity of the week - a second round of Music Together. Turns out I'm the kind of parent who will take a structured activity over free play at the park any day (so it was pretty timely that the Bad Parent section of Babble featured this article the other day).

And some other stuff happened last month, but the transition to part-time daycare was definitely the main event.  Now we're ready for the next major challenge, whatever that is...