3 weeks in and ...

I remember going to Sky Acres Girl Scout camp for a week when I was 7 or 8, and on day 3, hating every minute. It was night time, I was supposed to be sleeping and couldn't, and found myself crying in the counselor's tent, begging them to let me call my parents. "They're night owls, I promise they're awake until 11." Needless to say, they didn't let me call, so I finally went back to my tent and cried myself to sleep.

I also remember getting home after having the BEST time ever. So day 3 sucked, but from then on it was all fun and games and was well worth the one night of being homesick.

Three weeks into this part-time job, I keep waiting for the day 3 feeling to end, and for Piper to move onto the next stage of transition - acceptance and happiness! Starting the first night of my job, and thus, day care, she stopped sleeping through the night. Every night since 20 nights ago, except for two days on a weekend (and one was at my parents' house when we weren't there), she has been up multiple times, screaming her head off, absolutely pissed off at the world. We're all exhausted and could use a good night's sleep. I had forgotten how debilitating sleep deprivation is ... there's a reason why this is used as torture because it makes everything else about the rest of the day more difficult. UGH.

My first day was a Friday, and that whole weekend she was so mad at us that she would crawl away from us and try to hide. That Sunday, I picked her up from a way to short nap and she tried to wiggle out of my arms, so I put her down and she crawled into her closet and started banging her head into the wall. All I wanted to do was cry. I couldn't soothe her, she was clearly emotionally distressed, and why was I doing this again? Luckily, she's stopped the head banging. She's still super clingy, which got worse with her being away from me three days a week, and now she cries at soon as we pull into the day care parking lot, but they tell me that she has a good day once I leave. Well, except yesterday, when her report said that she "Had a hard day and was mean to her friends." Specifically, she was hitting and pulling hair. I think it's because she had a 101.6 fever when I picked her up and was sick ... which brings me to my next subject.

As expected, Piper has been working on her immune system as a result of being in day care. I missed my third day of work because she had literally fountains of snot running down her face. And today we went to the doctor's where she was diagnosed with coxsackievirus.The poor little thing has sores on the inside of her mouth ... plus her molars are still wreaking havoc on our lives. Awesome.

So how's the job going? Fine, but like I said, I'm waiting for "day 3" to be over. And if it's not over by the end of this (November 2!), and we all aren't feeling well rested and happy again, then the odds of me going back to work again until Piper and her potential future sibling are in school are pretty much zero. It's simply not worth it!

One fun update is that Piper is walking all over the place. I'm trying to think of when this started ... I think it was a couple of weeks ago. That may be a positive development from day care - the peer pressure finally pushed her into the land of the walkers with crawling now a thing of the past!

And just so I always remember, the pic above is from the balloon festival last weekend and is one of my new favorites. I love how happy they both look :-) We had to be up at 4:50 to get there in time to see the 90+ balloons take off with the sun, but it was well worth it!