Daycare conundrum

I've been getting a belated case of working mom guilt. I admit it, I used to call Saturday the new Monday.

Olivia started daycare very early -- she was 3 months old when I went back to work full time. We found her a facility that we were pretty happy with, she was the baby girl and got a lot of attention and love from the caregivers.

Now that Olivia is entering the developmental phase, I wonder if we should be trying to find a situation where she gets more one on one interaction and playtime. Googling 'Nanny vs daycare,' I found this article.

It raises some interesting points, with a nanny you are making a commitment to another person. It's kind of like dating, except that it's not very easy to break up. And you can't spend years looking for Nanny Right. Nannies who are energetic, engaged with the kids, and committed to helping the child develop emotionally and socially are few and far between, as evidenced by the new trend of nanny poaching.

I think the best thing I could do is find a way to work a shorter day. Or to try to find someone to take care of Olivia for a few hours after work.

Thank goodness for Guest blogger Margaret ...

Because I don't have much time to go through photos and upload the good ones, let alone tell stories of what Olivia is up to. This blog is gradually morphing into a place for me to publish interesting news clips, like this one about a climber who survived an avalanche fall on Half Dome.

Guest Blogger / Margaret - Feb 13-19, 2009

My visit with Olivia ---- She is adorable. She has a few new things:

Words - can say "Pa pa", "Hi", "Bye", "Book", "Baby" and will imitate the "Moooo" cow sound when she hears it.

Music - She LOVES music. When she wants to watch Noggin, she will point to the computer and say "Baby." She will dance to the music from her piano, and has figured out that when the automatic music isn't playing, she can play with the piano keys.

What can she do now? She will imitate people - She imitated me coughing into my hand, and tried to make a kiss sound with her mouth. She can use a spoon. She LOVES guacamole. She can roll a ball back and forth to you, and can throw the ball (at nothing in particular).


EATING GUACAMOLE



PACK 'N PLAY

How does a baby's mind work? It is actually quite amusing. In order to get her horse out of her pack 'n play, this is what she did:

She stood at the edge of her pack 'n play, raised her arms, and made a sound that said - "Hey, lift me up and put me in there." This is actually very odd because Olivia HATES to be placed into her pack 'n play (It usually means that mom and dad want her to sleep, and she will cry and fuss). So I put her in there. She then handed me her horse, to which I said - "Thank you" and put it on the bed. And then she put her arms out, which basically meant - "OK take me out now". She proceeded to play with the horse that was now outside of her pack 'n play.


THE NIPPLE GAME

She also invented a game for herself where she had her baby bottle plus an extra nipple. She would put the 2nd nipple over the first, and then clap when she did it. She even picked up the bottle with both nipples, and pretended to drink from it. She was very proud of herself.

Here are some photos (Alas, I tried to take Video, but couldn't really figure out the camera):






CLAPPING (SHE EVEN CLAPPED FOR ME WHEN I STACKED THE NIPPLES)

There goes the neighborhood.

I read in today's Chronicle that they are changing the format of Bay to Breakers to crack down on public drinking and floats. I think the Chronicle reporter stated it well when he says this is 'like banishing beads and masks from Mardi Gras.' Doesn't the city have better things to do with their time and budget than to hire a bunch of police people (on overtime) to kill one of city's biggest tourist attractions?

In 1995-96, police overtime cost the city $16 million. I cringe every time that I see Market Street closed off for a lame parade (sorry Irish people, but the cops seemed to outnumber the attendees of the St. Patrick's Day parade, and did anyone actually attend the 'Love Parade' (not to be confused with the Pride parade.)

What to do with all these pictures?

I was reading Shipoopi's blog, which I find much more entertaining than my own, and saw a post about too many pictures. Plagiarism! I had previously blogged on the subject of too many photos. I suppose that I am not the first parent to face the conundrum of what to do with all these photos.

Interestingly, we are now facing a different conundrum. Not enough photos and too many videos. After taking many pictures of the top of Olivia's head and other low quality shots, I started using my digital camera to take videos instead of photos. My parents love the videos and it's much easier to capture Olivia looking at the camera. However, they hog disk space -- I have managed to fill up the hard disk on my Mac. And they are a pain to send (takes forever to edit, burn to DVD, or upload.) I need to spend a weekend some month editing and managing all the videos I've taken in the past few months, but the weekends roll around and there's inevitably something else I'd rather be doing (or a squirmy toddler who needs attention.)