Our car was broken into this morning. I say “broken into” but I really mean “someone just opened the door because I forgot to lock it.”
This has happened twice in recent memory, twice that the thieves ransacked the ashtray for loose change, and twice that they DIDN’T take the Tim Horton’s gift certificates that are placed directly underneath it.
I don’t know if this means that we’re lucky, or they’re just stupid.
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Mark and I walked Emma to school this morning. Her normal temperature has been restored, although I’m not entirely sure that she was well enough to go. There was no way I could keep her home. It’s her last day of school, and I know she really wanted to see her friends.
We also walked Sarah to her caregiver. Not only is this her last day with this caregiver, but it’s her last day with daycare/homecare PERIOD. She says she’s going to miss it.
What we won’t miss, however, is writing checks for childcare.
Sarah starts grade one in the fall and won’t need PT morning care anymore.
We’ve been in home care as well as institutional-type daycare, and we also spent a year with a very nice co-op preschool. Last night Mark decided to look up (he diligently keeps track of such things with accounting software) how much we’ve paid into our childcare system since the Beginning Of Our Childcare Experience.
Guess how much we’ve paid? C’mon. Guess! I’ll give you a hint. It’s a luxury car. Or a downpayment on a house. Or a brand new kitchen. Or the holiday of a lifetime.
Guess and then look under the fold.
$59,000.
(What did you guess?)
It’s a lot of money, for sure, but it’s been worth it. The girls have had excellent and reliable care at every point in their lives: the homecare, the daycare and the co-op preschool, and let’s not forget, care by yours truly. (Although I do have days where I slack off. I would have fired my a$$ long ago.)
So now we’re out of the daycare scene and moving into another phase of our lives.
I distinctly remember a time when Emma was very small, say 18 months or two, when she hated getting dressed into her winter gear. She had a one-piece snowsuit and we had to wrestle and bargain and plead and trick her to put it on. On good days it took 15 minutes to get her inside the snowsuit and into the car. On very bad days it took about the same amount of time but twice the tears (hers), and perspiration (ours), and much wriggling and squirming. She did this thing, where she’d arch her back making it physically impossible to get her into the car seat. It was so aggravating. I couldn’t get through those days fast enough. When your kid is screaming and refusing to put on her snowsuit it seems like it’s never going to end. I never thought to look ahead to these days, that are happening right now. We have these two lovely, and funny and unique little spirits, and amazingly enough, they are the same little people who didn’t want to put their snowsuits on not that very long ago.
So here we are. Life is like a story that keeps unfolding, isn’t it?
