The three of us (Chick, Chicklet, and Busling) are putting on shoes, jackets, and et cetera, preparing to head out and catch the 8. Chicklet, who has no rival in the dawdling department, is (per usual) taking forever. She resists instructions to take a preventative trip to the restroom, puts her shoes on the wrong feet, pauses to play with dinosaur figurines recently strewn around the entry, and manages to misplace one of her mittens.
While I’m zipping Busling’s jacket, she disappears into the bedroom. I call for her to come back and put on her hat.
She calls back: “I’m just going to get …”
Busling stops her mid-sentence, and in a perfect imitation of my exasperated tone, hollers, “We don’t have time!”
Ah, the joys of young-child motherhood. My daughter wore corrective shoes, and they were leather and expensive. So we had boots. They had to be Snoopy boots, not Woodstock, not Charlie Brown…I bought them a teensy bit large so they’d last the whole season but by spring they were snug, so I learned that by slipping her shod foot into a plastic bag first, the boot would go on easily. Unfortunately the daycare staff couldn’t seem to learn the technique and would struggle to get her boots on for outdoors time, give up, and inform me that I should get new boots. Being a stay-at-home mom aids you in reducing your kids’ exposure to lowest common denominator, easy way out people. Those attitudes are contagious.
I work in an office three days per week, so my two go to daycare on those days. Fortunately, the teachers who work with them are kind and resourceful, so we haven’t had many problems. I feel blessed to have found such a wonderful place only six blocks from our home.