Beginning of Beautiful Relationships

Today was the day! The first day of Emma going back to daycare. She has been out for 10 months so although I knew she'd eventually adjust, I was worried about that adjustment period.

Here she is as we arrived at school:


And here we are walking in as daddy lugs all of her stuff and takes a snapshot:


It turns out that I had nothing to worry about! Her teachers said she did amazing and made lots of new friends. Of course there were a few times where she was fussy but they said they would expect that with such a new schedule and surroundings. She is also on the meal plan for the first time and it is such a weight off my shoulders not to have to worry about her breakfast or lunch. It was always stressful for me to make sure she had enough vegetables, fruits, grain, etc each day. Today on the menu they had french toast for breakfast, fish sticks with baked beans, carrots and fruit for lunch and then pretzels for a snack. They said she was a good eater (shocker) and ate all of her breakfast and almost all of her lunch.

Another adjustment I was worried about was that they don't sleep in cribs during naptime in this classroom. They sleep on mats. It was hard to picture Emma napping on a confined space with no barriers around her since she squirms and rolls all over her crib. We laid it out on Saturday to introduce it to her so she'd at least be familiar with it...and well, you could say she took to it pretty well...

She LOVED it! When Josh and I went into the kitchen, she followed behind us with her nap mat in tow. Then she proceeded to lay it out and lay back down on it. We put it in her crib during her nap on Sunday so that she would understand that she was supposed to sleep on it. I guess it worked because they said that not only did Emma go right to sleep with no help, but she slept the whole two hours and the teachers had to wake her. She said Emma did not want to wake up which I wasn't surprised at (she gets her need for sleep from me!). She normally sleeps about 2.5 hours at home.

All in all a success! And my week is starting off well too. I'm going through my own adjustment period though and I can only hope that mine goes as smoothly as Emma's!