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...