Daycare – Only the hard ones survive

I’m not sure who suffers the most on a child’s first month at daycare. Is it the weeping child, the anxious parent, or the care provider trying to calm the child and the parent?

I can only speak from my perspective, and I’m gonna place my bet on – The parent.

Surviving First Day

Whether you are dropping your infant off for their first day ever away from the wicked awesomeness that is Mommy, or dropping your toddler off for their first day at a new daycare, the first day blows. The first time I dropped Ansh off at daycare, I sat outside his classroom and howled like a fat girl whose cake has been stolen. There were 10 crying kids in the room and somehow I could recognize his cry amongst all others. Yeah, this torture called motherhood, enables your sixth sense to recognize your kid’s voice even in a loud setup. That made me ever more depressed. So I sent a random parent inside to spy on him, who came outside and told me that my kid was sitting in a corner playing with dough, and not crying. “I don’t understand? I can hear him cry”. I was sure that he confused my kid with someone else’s, so I described him Ansh again. “Yeah! The ONLY Indian kid in class right? He is playing and not crying at all”.

Hmmmm…. So my sixth sense wasn’t working so well. But somehow, I didn’t want to believe him. I came home and cried even louder. At this point, I called my parents, my sister, my husband, my friends and everybody else I could think of who could make sense of my mumbling while crying. But none of them said anything different from what I already knew. “It’s good for him”. It’s only when Ansh’s teacher sent me his picture of playing with ball, did I breathe.

Surviving the Germ Pool

No, it’s not just an urban myth that daycares are cesspools of germs. Ear infection, Hand Foot and Mouth, roseola croup, you name it. Daycares are full of sexy- sounding illnesses that will invade your child.

Ansh started daycare 3 months ago. Yes, germ-filled, push-your-kid-off-the-swing set, pay-them-half-your-salary, daycare. And in the last 3 months, this is already his 19^th cold, my 4^th sore throat, and Ashish’s 100^th anxiety attack.

“Is he scratching his ear more than usual?” “How did he bump his head?” “What’s that on his knee?” “Does he look too pale to you?” “There’s something different about his eyebrow today” “He’s missing a hair from his head”… okay, I completely made up the last one, but this is exactly what he sounds like.

In most cases it’s just teething/ cold/ him trying to sap your will to live. That’s when we dose him up with Tylenol and pray that it gets better by the morning. Or for long enough to get to work, pour ourselves a cup of coffee and check our emails before we get The Call.

Surviving The Call

Every mom dreads seeing their daycare’s number come up on their phones. It is never them calling to let you know that your kid is a ray of sunshine and they just wanted you to know how much they love having them. It is daycare calling to let you know that he has hit his head again or that his fever is beyond the magic number of 100.1. And he needs to be picked up. The Call always seems to come when you are right in the middle of something important, like updating your blog. Great! This means, another week of sniffing, coughing, medicines, cranky baby and a cranky husband. Let me publish this post and then I’ll answer the call.

Surviving The Mean Kid

Every daycare has a mean kid. They are the one that you just look at and can see that their tiny beady eyes are filled with mirth. This is the kid that is always pushing, hitting, saying "mine!". You know, the one you have to fight off the urge on a daily basis to tell they are going to grow up with no friends. 

Surviving The Missed Milestone

It is inevitable that since our child is at daycare so often, he will hit some sort of milestone for them and not for us. Really? My baby said his first word/ learnt to eat by himself/ completed his doctoral thesis today? Thanks for letting me know.

Well, my point is, being a daycare mom isn’t a job of the fragile, I-can’t-drive-because-I got-Henna-on moms. If you got henna on your hands, you cover it up with toilet paper and keep moving. Because only the tough ones survive! 

Seattle and Starbucks - The relationship!

So following the trend, we moved to Seattle a few months ago. Whenever I visit a new city, I tend to approach it with the only knowledge I have, and the only knowledge I have often revolves around a popular TV show or a movie. “So it rains all the time, people live in houseboats and ride ferry boats to work?” was my first reaction when Ashish told me that we are moving to Seattle. Cliché, I know. But Tom Hanks had convinced me that Seattle is all about gray skies and rainy days; and McDreamy rode Ferry boats and lived on top of beautiful green hills.

But Seattle is much more than that. Seattle has it all – mountains and beaches, arts and parks, music and film, quirky neighborhoods, award winning restaurants, thriving industries, food and coffee, Oh! so much coffee, Amazon and Starbucks; Microsoft and Starbucks; Boeing and Starbucks; Nordstrom and Starbucks! I guess what I’m trying to say is, this city has everything and then some more, a lot more of Starbucks!

I have never been a coffee drinker, but I have always loved hanging out at coffee houses. I mean, you could hang out at movie theaters, diners, malls, arcades. Each of them are fun in their own way, but each of them have an explicit goal, which once achieved, you are encouraged to leave. Movie’s done? Leave the theater. Dinner’s over? Say Goodnight. Out of money? Oh darn! But Coffee houses are different. Sure, you gotta buy at least one drink, you don’t want to be frowned upon. But after you got the drink in your hands, it’s all about comfy chairs, couches, people to sit and talk with, gaze outside the window, or write a blog post :) And what makes your life even more easier is if you are in Seattle and there’s a Starbucks every 10 steps.

Here’s what I think Starbucks brings to the Seattle culture. In this fast paced, technically advancing, exponentially speeding cybercity, where people can easily feel frazzled and out of sync with their deepest selves, Starbucks slows down the pace, forces them to take a break from their hectic parts of life. To contemplate. To connect with themselves again. To escape the rush.  It’s adds the much needed stability in the lives of  us, Seattleites. That's right, I'm a Seattleite now :)

After wrapping up my daily chores, I come to the Starbucks near my house and work from here. Be it job hunting, updating my websites, networking, socializing or just writing a blog post. I like to sit in my quiet corner and work un-interrupted (and by un-interrupted I mean, not being distracted by Netflix). And sometimes I just observe different people. Now, I’m not a creep spying on random people and their lives, but you can’t ignore the group of senior citizens who come in everyday at 11am and take up an entire table to play poker. They laugh so hard that they scare the little dog who accompanies a petite woman, who I assume gets back from her run and treats herself with a coffee. Then there’s differently abled Jack, who drives in his wheelchair and orders the same Grande Frappuccino, pulls out his straw and sits facing the door while sipping his coffee. He sits there for hours, and sometimes I think he has fallen asleep, but then he quietly smirks at himself, as if he knows exactly what life is about. I wish I had that kind of tranquility. Of course there are new faces every day. Group of new moms who just need to vent, or old friends catching up, or business meetings, or savvy bloggers, or people just taking a break. All these people are so different and distant from each other, yet they have one thing in common – their love for Starbucks. People from all walks of life, brought together by a cup of coffee. Now, that’s something.

Sure, there are many local coffee shops in Seattle and each one of them has a unique feel and caters to different people. Hipsters, Goths, Businessmen, Teenagers, etc. But I believe the reason Starbucks is where it is, is because it caters to each one of them and then some more. My credit card statement shows a lot of transactions in Starbucks now, but I do feel that it’s worth it. Walking down the street with a Starbucks coffee mug in my hand, makes me feel like I belong to this place.

At this point, I would like to make it very clear, that I am not a Starbucks ambassador, and nor do I work for them. Though I won't deny that the thought of working for them hasn't crossed my mind ;)

In a nutshell, If you are in Seattle, take a break, visit your nearest Starbucks, and connect with yourself.