Daycare Dilemma

As each school year comes to an end, I’m inundated with ideas on how to make this summer the BEST SUMMER EVER!!! In the short span of 2 months I will visit every free/cheap kid friendly museum or function, instill an insane love for reading, and work on reading skills that will place them 2 grades above their actual placement.  To say we’re ambitious might be somewhat of an understatement. Our plans of an epic summer may actually be attainable because Caleb and Jaiden have started daycare (cue the choir’s roaring rendition of Hallelujah). To everyone’s delight, they love daycare! Spoiler Alert: To all the stay at home moms that make their own soap, cook organic meals with fresh vegetables picked from their own gardens that would never EVER consider sending their unvaccinated angels to daycare, this blog may not be for you. Back to the miracle I will refer to as daycare; it honestly has been extremely beneficial to me ..I mean the boys. Their speech therapists have noticed a tremendous difference in their speech and the interaction with their peers has worked wonders for their social interaction and development. Did I mention they are usually exhausted at bedtime (kudos to their daycare teacher!!) ? While I am not at a place where I can joke about sending them to daycare I must admit this was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to face. Both my 15 year old daughter and my 11 year old son attended daycare out of necessity and Caleb and Jaiden actually go to the same day care that my eleven-year-old son attended from the age of six weeks to 5 years old. We are extremely grateful and blessed to be able to leave our kids with someone we trust so much and is as close to family as possible because I’m aware that not many people aren’t afforded this opportunity. Even with all of this in mind there was still a nagging voice in the back of my head that questioned my decision. To be perfectly honest I felt that sending them to daycare appeared to be a failure of some sort on my part.I mean how hard is it to keep an immaculant home, cook a healthy homecooked meals everyday, while chasing twin 2 year old boys. Not to mention picking up two older kids from school, football/basketball practice, maintaining a calendar filled with specialist appointments and weekly speech, physical and occupational therapy. I went to bed tired, woke up tired and prayed for a long midafternoon nap (this NEVER happened). In my eyes daycare for the boys while I stayed home just felt wrong. The first week I cried, I felt like a terrible mom. The boys never cried, they actually wanted to stay when I came to pick them up. When it was time to pick them up I couldnt believe how much I’d accomplished at home and I even had the energy to go to the park after picking them up. I was happier and apparently it showed because my son would say,  “Wow mom, you’re not tired”. I realized while trying to portray this image of a “perfect mom” that I had created in my head,I was missing out on just being a mom. My kids won’t remember the house being clean or always having a home-cooked meal but they will remember memories we created and a mom that wasn’t too tired to just enjoy life. No, I’m not perfect but to my kids that doesn’t matter.

Lauryn teaching me how to do a proper selfie!!