The Daycare Shuffle

Last we left off on Kelly's daycare saga was back in January when our first wonderful daycare, Great Beginnings, was suddently closing and Kelly was going to start a new Montessori school, and we were all excited etc.....well, that lasted about 3 weeks during which the entire time Kelly cried every morning AND night, complained about the teachers & the other kids, said that it was boring, refused to nap, didn't like the food, and told eveyone and anyone she came in contact about how she "didn't like her new school"...Since this was such a radical change from how she had always behaved toward daycare, I spent a couple hours observing one day while she wasn't there and realized pretty quickly why she didn't like it. So...we quickly had to rethink our daycare situation.

Very luckily for us, our good family friend, Chelsea, had an opening in her own in-home daycare and offered it to us, so we jumped on it. Kelly was instantly happier and seemed to think she was going on a play-date with her good friend Kainoa 3 days/week! A marked improvement! They got to do lots of fun stuff like go to the beach, the park, Legoland, Quail Gardens, the Children's museum, while also working on typical pre-school lessons such as reading, letters, art, music etc.

So all was good for a couple months, but with Chelsea being pregnant, and then making some changes in order to make a move back to Hawaii, she decided to close down her daycare as well. (boo-hoo!) Again, luckily, Kelly had been to Chelsea's "backup" daycare person, Kendra's (KaiKare), a few times and Kendra took us in. So she went there for a couple months, and Kelly enjoyed it there very much too. Here are some pix from Kendra's.

Unfortunately, Kendra could only stay open till 5pm and she is located in Cardiff, about 10 minutes drive south of us and opposite direction of my office, so when I took a full-time position with my company working until 5pm in Carlsbad, I realized it was time to go ahead and find Kelly a pre-school closer to work and one that would be open until 6pm. I had been meaning to get her on lists for fall anyway thinking that it would be good to have her in a more formal pre-school for a year before she started Kindergarten anyway. So, after several phone interviews & site visits, I enrolled her at Discovery Isle in Carlsbad.

They are absolutely wonderful there! Great curriculum, colorful and playful environment, loving, caring teachers, great facility and equipment etc. And Kelly even had her vote in going there, which seemed to make it even easier on her transition. She didn't cry at all the first day, in fact, all the little girls came running over to her when the teacher introduced her, and one little girl in particular, grabbed Kelly's hand and said, "come on, I'll show you the TOYS!", and off they went! She barely looked back. Reminded me of that bittersweet feeling I had at Great Beginnings... a little sad that they don't seem to miss you, but thrilled that they are that comfortble to stay there without you too. I still have to find out who the mother of that little girl is and tell her how much I appreciated her little girl's kindness!

She's been there 3 weeks now and is doing great. She's very happy and seems to be learning a lot of new things already. Whew - I'm glad we are finally settled in! I'm sure a year will fly by and then I'll be blogging about the first day of Kindergarten! YIKES!