Grace goes to school!

Today was a big day in our house--Grace started day care!

For the last 6 1/2 months Mark and I have shared childcare responsibility, handing Grace back and forth between work appointments, classes, meetings, etc. Needless to say, we've been a little stressed out. But sending Grace to day care was not an easy thing to do. We LOVE the time we spend with her and it's hard to think of her spending half of her waking hours with people other than us. That being said, we think it's really important that she has a bit of independence and spends times with other babies.

So, a few weeks ago we set out to figure out where to take her. We decided on a day care which is located at a church near our house. It seems really clean, they have a curriculum for the kids once they move to the one year room, the "teachers" have all been there several years, when we visited the teachers were all on the floor with the kids playing, and most importantly, we just had a good gut feeling when we went there.

Today we packed up Grace's bag and dropped her off at 9:30. They sat her on a play mat and she was so excited about the new toys, she never even noticed when we left. Mark and I, on the other hand, had a hard time leaving, shed a few tears, and were preoccupied most of the day.

But she did great! She took her naps, ate her food, and got lots of play time in. Ms. Ann and Ms. Shaina said that she was a model student :) It was a lot of fun to go in and pick her up and get her big smile. It was also nice to be able to play with her tonight knowing I had got what I needed to get done today done. I think overall "school" will be good for our family--it will just take some getting use to!

School is exhausting! A before dinner cat nap.