Routine, Schmroutine

Going back to work wasn't nearly the hellishly dramatic disaster I feared it would be. My assistant and I have officially switched roles, and she'll be training me on how to do my job this week, now that I have my bearings again. We'll probably switch back to our normal selves, a la Freaky Friday, on, well, Friday.

We've established that it is critically important to have a routine in the mornings in order for everyone to get out the door fully dressed and fully fed. So I get up around 6:30 and eat and get ready immediately. Rob's morning depends on when Ava wakes up. If she wakes up before 7, he feeds her until 7 and then I take over so he can get ready for work. It is very, very important for her to start her bottle no later than 7:30 so I can get us out the door by 8:15. Anything that can be done the night before (make lunches, fix bottles for daycare, etc.) is done the night before.

Ava is in the Twinkle Star room at daycare, which is entirely appropriate. She is after all our twinkly little star, as evidenced in her first school picture:


I KNOW!

We really do like Ava's daycare. They are wonderful and they treat her, and us, like old friends. They take excellent care of her, and I know this because I have visited her every day thus far on my lunch hour, which they don't mind a bit. I know there will come a time when I won't be able to go every day, and maybe sometime I won't feel like I need to. But right now I can and I do and my schedule and location allows it so there we are. Some days she is awake and I get to feed her, some days I catch nap time and we sit in the rocker and just have a cuddle.

It's hard to leave her. It's hard to walk away from her in the mornings. She usually falls asleep in the car and so it's easier on me to let her stay asleep in the carseat when I drop her off. The worst day was Tuesday when she was awake and hungry and crying and I handed her to Miss Nina and I could hear her all the way down the hall. Oof. But our aforementioned routine means that she eats before we leave and that problem shouldn't arise again.

So here's a video from this morning. Ava has the requisite playmat where soft friendly bugs hang down from above her and she giggles and smiles at them. And sometimes she falls asleep with her binky somehow ending up on her forehead.



So that's where we are. It was a good week. It's good to be back at work and we are pleasantly surprised with how happy we are with the daycare. Yes, there's a significant amount of mommy guilt every time I walk away from her, but it gets cancelled out by the big smile I see when I walk in to the Twinkle Star room to pick her up at the end of the day.