Namaste, Out the Road Blog

Dear All,

Hope this find everyone out there well and happy!

I realized yesterday evening that I now have less than two weeks left before I return to work fulltime and Ellie starts daycare fulltime. My total time on leave will be 8 weeks when it's all said and done, and at least the first six weeks of it seem to have gone by fast!

While I've done everything I can to make sure our transition back to "reality" is reasonably smooth, I still expect it to be a challenging time, as I get familiar with how the added stress and time-demands of doing my job, and of commuting to and from the office, affect my routine and relationship with Ellie. I work from home two days per week, so that helps. On those days, Ellie will still be at daycare, but I'll be spared the 30+ minute commute to and from my office, which will give her and me a bit more breathing room in our schedule.

On the days that I work at the office, our schedule will be pretty tight. The last two days, I've left Ellie at daycare until about 5 PM, to approximate how our evening schedule will be when I go back to work. (I plan to work 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM and hope that will allow me to pick her up at daycare at about 5 PM most nights, as long as the traffic's not a problem.) The first day of picking her up at 5 PM showed me that this schedule really compresses our evenings. Even if we don't hit bad traffic, we usually won't be walking in the door of our house until about 5:15 PM. Ideally I will be sitting her down for dinner at 5:30 PM, so most of my cooking is going to have to be done in advance, with dinner being just a "heat and serve it" affair. Ellie's eating dinner and the post-eating clean-up usually take about 30 minutes and that just leaves us one hour until it's time for her to go to bed.

On the first day that I picked her up at 5 PM, it was also Ellie's bath day, which really crunched our time in the evening. Immediately after dinner, I got her bath ready and immediately after her bath I gave her a bottle (I still give her a 50% milk/50% formula bottle first thing in the morning and about 30 minutes before bedtime). By hustling through these tasks, I was able to get Ellie in her crib with lights out by 7:05 PM, just 5 minutes later than usual. So, it's doable. It just requires that I have a pretty constant awareness of what time it is and do my best to keep us on task.

I do wonder how this tight weekday schedule will affect Ellie in the long run. Will she start balking at the regimen of getting up, hustling off to daycare after just 20-25 minutes at home, and then having just a couple of hours at home in the evenings? This morning, for the first time, Ellie threw a bit of a tantrum when it was time for me to say bye-bye at the daycare. Although she's been a tiny bit weepy at times in the past, this was a more escalated reaction to my leaving. The owner of the daycare, Miss Vivian, is there in the early mornings on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and she took Ellie and started playing with her. When I walked out, Ellie was still crying, but 10 seconds later when I peeked in the front window she was sitting in Miss Vivian's lap and seemed to have stopped crying. (Thank goodness! It would have been tough to drive away if she was still so upset.)

It's interesting to me that it was after spending her two longest days at the daycare (I've picked her up at 5 PM the last two days) that she had this stronger reaction to my leaving her. It could have been coincidental. In general, thus far she seem to be happy at daycare. Her teachers and the daycare manager report that she is eating well there, is taking daily naps of about 2 hours, and is enjoying her time there. When I pick her up in the afternoons, she always seems fine and happy. Of course, she also is always very happy to see Mommy. She always greets me with a very excited smile and demands to be held. She knows it's time to go home, so she starts saying "tah tah" to everyone and leans in to give her teacher, Miss Nisha, a kiss on the cheek. (Also, even when she was at CH, I learned to take with a grain of salt the "all's well" assessments of Ellie's caregivers. Especially in the case of a daycare, which stands to lose business if a child does not do well there, it's not in their financial interest to disclose to parents every little thing that may not be perfect.)

So, I'll continue monitoring the situation to see how she's doing with fulltime daycare, especially once I go back to work. I have the option, at some point in the future, of getting an at-home baby-sitter to take care of her during the days that I work from home. In order to make this work, I would need to move my office to the basement and effectively leave Ellie and the baby-sitter alone on the main floor of the house, otherwise I doubt I'll get much work done. I haven't gone this route yet because it would be substantially more expensive. The daycare does not offer part-time rates, so I'd still be paying the 5-day per week rate there, plus adding 2 days of baby-sitting at $10 or more per hour.

Also, I think the daycare is probably a more stimulating environment for her, with exposure to more people and activities than she would have at home with a baby-sitter. For instance, she has already become a favorite with the pre-teen daughters of one of the teachers there (she's the teacher in the room adjacent to the toddler room). These girls apparently visit the daycare some days after they get out of school and they have already become good friends with my Little Cutie. (It reminds me of the way the older girls at Children's Home used to love playing with Ellie, putting her hair in pig-tails, or putting nail polish on her.)

Well, on another topic, I've been thinking back this morning to my days with Ellie at the Summit Hotel in Nepal and our long trip back home to Atlanta. If we consider that I had an almost 2-year long "paper pregnancy" of working to complete this adoption, then maybe it's apt to consider the 3 weeks at the Summit as comparable to being in labor, and the 35+ hour trip home as comparable to the actual delivery of my child.

What triggered this line of thinking for me was the fact that this morning Ellie woke up a bit early and so I was under time pressure during my morning shower, because I was sure she would start howling soon for me to let her out of the crib. This experience took me back in my mind to the days at the Summit when I was lucky if I could take a shower of even a couple of minutes in length. Usually Ellie would be standing outside the shower stall, watching me. (I learned to ignore the fact that water was splattering everywhere.) After a while, she started getting more curious about the water and some days seemed tempted to walk into the shower with me (despite her being fully clothed). So, I had to shower quickly to avoid flooding the bathroom, as well as to keep my young toddler from dangerously walking into the shower stall (which had a tiled ledge with hard, sharp corners) and possibly slipping. Also, as I was trying to get her to enjoy her baths back in those days, there were, too, some mornings when I would try to get her to go into the shower with me, taking her clothes off, only to find her dead-set against having to give up her diaper. Or, there were also times I managed to get her clothes and diaper off, only to have her stand just outside the shower stall, refusing to come, or be placed, into the shower itself. And there was the time she pooped on the bath-mat on the floor of the bathroom, while refusing to come into the shower.

Boy, it tires me just to think back to those trying days of having almost every aspect of caring for my child be a challenge and a struggle. I have already written a fair amount on the challenges of getting through meals with Ellie during our stay at the Summit. However, I don't think I mentioned in previous posts that I returned to Atlanta to find that I had lost 8 lbs. in the 3 weeks of being in Nepal, testament to many missed or half-eaten meals there. Yes, I think the word "labor" suits this period well.

And then there's the long trip back home . . . the "delivery," with it's full share of exhaustion, of illness, and of stress. Again, it tires me even now to think back on the experience of being constantly vigilant of Ellie's whereabouts and safety, of whether we had a bottle accessible during take-offs and landings, of keeping track of passports, tickets, boarding passes, and of numerous, heavy carry-on items, all over the course of being in 4 airports over almost 2 full days.

Andy in particular had a couple of scares in which he forgot where he had placed his passport or his ticket. You know those terrible moments of realizing that something important -- your keys, your wallet, whatever -- is not where you thought it would be. You go a bit white in the face and break out in a sweat, you pat your pockets, check all the places where the missing, crucial item might be. When it's finally located, your mind and body breath a huge sigh of relief. Well, imagine all that, with essentially no sleep, over the course of two days of stressful international travel with a young child. Poor Andy! He actually handled the rest of the trip and our time at the Summit with his usual good humor and patience, but in these couple of instances of having something go missing, I saw even the ever-calm Andy get stressed out.

Thankfully, my paper pregnancy, labor, and delivery all ended with our happy arrival to our house in Decatur, to be greeted by gifts and a Welcome Home banner on the front porch. Yes, the arrival of my 18-month old baby was in every measure a joyous occasion! And that joy, and the demands of stepping into this new role of being a parent, have quickly overshadowed the trials and tribulations of getting my child home. But what an adventure it was and continues to be!

Lots of love,
PA