Daycare, Preschool, “Real” School

Come fall, she’ll be a newly minted four-year-old (God willing). My baby. That baby I just had, who made me so proud when I held her on my belly, cupped her chin between by thumb and index finger, patted her back and she burped.

She’s been in daycare since she was six months old. Partial weeks — all day — and full weeks, depending on circumstances. Mostly full-time, all day, five days a week, for long stretches.

“It’s too long,” she would tell me about the time she turned three, right before we decided to leave the sweet daycare that had been her home away from home since her infancy. “It’s too long,” she would tell me after we switched to the new place, a preschool that’s really a daycare with a friendly staff.

So her good daddy, whose schedule is more flexible than mine, picks her up a bit early, and she no longer complains that it’s too long.

A good deal of our time together on weekdays consists of eating, dressing, hygiene, grooming and hurrying the girl to school or bed. I walk through the leafy park near my office during lunch and see moms leisurely playing with babies, toddlers and preschoolers.

I’m not ready for my baby to go to real school. I wanted a chance to be more of a stay-at-home mom. Much more of one. Yet, we’re planning to send her to pre-K this fall at a “real” school. I am confident this wonderful school with a great philosophy and mission and reputation will be a good place for her. Were we not sending her there, to this full-time, five-day-a-week school, we’d be sending her to her daycare, almost full-time, anyway. While she is comfortable there, likes her teachers and friends, I don’t want to keep her there for another year. And she’d have less of an opportunity to go to the nice school the following year, because most of the kindergarten slots would be taken with advancing pre-Kers.

I guess this is one of those “nice” complaints. The little girl was invited to attend an excellent school. We plan to send her there. If we didn’t send her there this fall, it’s not as if I’d be stay-at-home mothering her. I think she’ll be excited about her new school. There’s a little twinge in my heart, though. Time passing quickly, an opportunity slipping, my baby heading off to school, and before I know it, grown up, away from me.