Starting Daycare

Wordy post with only two pictures warning...


This past week Clara started going to her Kita (daycare). She was supposed to start on Monday, but that morning we went to get a health certificate showing that she was healthy (and had her recommended vaccinations), and didn't get to the Kita until about 11:00am. This was too late, because a little after 11 they start changing diapers and getting ready for lunch, and they wanted Clara's first real visit to be during play time.

Clara had some seriously troubled nights last week, partly due to jet-lag and partly due to teething. In any case, on Tuesday we all slept in too late to get to the Kita again. So Wednesday was Clara's first day.

On Wednesday Clara's Opa and I took her to the Kita at 9am. For a long time Clara stuck next to my legs, but after a half hour or 45 minutes she started to venture a bit more away. There is another girl starting in the group (they usually try to avoid this) who was very distressed when her mom left for 15 minutes, and I don't think her crying helped much. On this first day we stayed with Clara the whole time we were there, and they suggested that on Thursday I would leave for five minutes to see how Clara did. They also suggested that we come at 10am instead, so that the other girl would have gone home already.

On Thursday we arrived just as the other new girl was leaving. (It looked like another difficult day for her!) This time Clara was much more at ease, and went to play immediately with Khalil and Nanu. After about half an hour Katrin (Clara's teacher) asked me to leave for almost a half hour. When I came back at 11 Clara was doing great, and didn't even take particular note of me when I came back! Katrin said she did great, and didn't cry at all! She suggested that on Friday we would try 45 minutes.

Thursday night was a complete disaster.

I can't remember the timeline exactly, but sometime after midnight Clara started throwing up. The evening we arrived Clara's Opa had been sick, but we had all assumed that it was food-poisoning from an airport sandwich, now Tanja and I were worried it had been a stomach bug. We called my Mom (it's great to be able to call a nurse who lives eight time zones away!), and watched unhappily as Clara was sick several more times. Clara wouldn't sleep in her own bed, so we got out a blanket and towel and took her into bed with us. She fell asleep for a short period, but then woke up and wanted to nurse. We were worried about letting her, since earlier she seemed to be sick almost immediately after drinking anything, but after an hour gave in. Luckily, she wasn't sick for the rest of the night.

After this episode we were very confused. If it was a stomach bug Clara should have been sick a lot longer, rather than just three times in a short period. Also, you'd expect that she'd be sick in uhhhh... the other direction... But she wasn't. She also never had a fever. In the morning she woke up in great spirits, and we were stuck with deciding wether or not to go to Kita. In the end we decided that it must not have been a virus, and I took her.

Clara did pretty good at the Kita on Friday, she cried when I left, and at least once while I was gone. This time when I came to pick her up she was REALLY happy to see me! Despite this, Katrin said that Clara was easily distracted from her tears, and was easily interested in toys, so overall it went really well. Based on this, the plan for Monday was to see if she can stay through lunch!

Friday night was a complete disaster.

Clara was teething, Tanja was REALLY sick (oops, guess it was a stomach bug after all...), and after everyone else finally fell asleep I got hit with insomnia and after laying in bed awake for two hours I got up at 5am or so. Happy Valentines Day!

Saturday was a day of recovery, and Sunday was actually quite nice. Clara and Tanja seem to be doing really well now, but I was hit with insomnia again on Sunday morning (updated my CV, found a few interesting jobs online), and Monday morning (sent a job-hunting related email and wrote most of this blog post), and now again on Tuesday. Ugh.

Monday morning Clara had a much more troubled day at Kita, but it wasn't really her fault. Karim had come back from more than two weeks of being at home sick with his Mom, and he wasn't so well adjusted to daycare yet to begin with. So Monday morning Katrin asked me to just pick Clara up at 11, because she expected trouble. And trouble she got... Karim was whining and screaming a lot, and this set Clara off too. Clara was crying when I came to get her and was SO relieved when I came to pick her up.

Hopefully today will go better!

Two other items before I sign off with a cute Chester photo.

First, I'm finally enrolled in an intensive German class! I start next Monday, 10-1 each weekday for three weeks!

Second, we've had another "wow!" moment with Clara. One of the nights that she had jet-lag I asked her to go to the bookshelf and get me a specific book, "ABC, die Katze lief in Schnee." She walked over and picked out the correct book! So I read it to her and then asked her to go get "Goodnight Moon," and again she picked out the right book. Next I asked her to get "Happy Baby Words," which is a pretty bizarre title that I happen to usually say before I go through the book with her because I think it's funny. Again, she picked out the right book. I then asked her to get me the "Tails" book, which wasn't actually on the bookshelf. This time she just pointed at the tail of nearby stuffed animal! I picked up the Tails book myself from the floor, read it to her, and then I noticed that "Clifford the Big Red Dog" was sitting under another book, but was partially visable from where we were sitting. I asked her to get it, and she walked over and deliberately knocked off the book on top and then brought it to me! I was really surprised that she knows the title of all her books!

A few days later I was in the kitchen with Tanja and for some reason said a part of a German nursery rhyme out loud. Clara walked out of the kitchen and came back about half a minute later with the book that has that rhyme in it!

Thanks for reading all that! Now here it is, your moment of Zen: