Our Baby's Growing Up

As my husband reminds me, I am a bit over the top with the whole preschool thing. I know Cashe isn't even two yet, but let me just justify my reasoning for preschool ... as opposed to just 'daycare'.

At 10 months old, this crazy mama was just that: CRAZY. I suffered all sorts of symptoms of Post Partum Depression a good year or more into Cashe's life. (Lucky guy.) Well, my hubby was sweet enough & logical enough to recognize I needed some 'me' time.

Now, don't get me wrong, I know I'm a Mom now & I signed up to be a Mom when we decided to 'try' to have children. I, however didn't realize how hard it was going to be on me emotionally & hormonally. I needed a sense of 'me' back after sacrificing my body for 9+ months as well as my career & my time & my schedule & parts of my social life. As selfish as it sounds, I just wasn't prepared to be all that unselfish quite yet.

The solution was to socialize Cashe a little in daycare & give me a break so I could work on my part-time career, gain some adult interaction & most importantly, get some 'chill' time with the girls for lunch or for coffee or at the gym or just at home cleaning.

After 6 months, Cashe's (phenomenal) daycare lady retired & I was on the hunt to find something or someone as fabulous as Franziska. And after months of much prayer & lots of research, we found Eagle Early Learning Center. They were comparable in price to a lot of the other daycares in the area, BUT they provide a curriculum for learning instead of just having your child babysat all day.

[Disclaimer: I promise I am not suggesting all other daycares in the area only provide measily "babysitting" for children - EELC just happened to go above & beyond by calling me back & working their schedules around ME, rather than me trying to squeeze Cashe into a tiny time slot somewhere in their schedule. It certainly was a huge benefit to us that they did follow a learning curriculum.]

All of the teachers at EELC have degrees in early childhood development & the children are assigned a teacher who will be with them each & every year until they go off to Kindergarten.

In addition to all this fabulousness, they even bent the rules & allowed Cashe to attend early as they don't usually take kids before the age of 2. I was just asked to bring him in to get to know him & make sure he was prepared to spend time with older kids & they were totally great with it!

Although Cashe had started the Summer Program in July, his first official SCHOOL day was Tuesday, September 6th. He looked so sharp & brought his Clifford dog for naptime & his little packed lunch & even made a homemade vase for his teacher, Ms. Chris.

Of course the best thing is, he loves going & has many sweet little friends. He is the youngest in the school & in his class (but not the smallest - that boy can eat!) but he's getting to spend time with other children throughout the week & not just his CRAZY mama.