WORK with me here!

Let’s pretend that it hasn’t been five months since my last post. We’re all still friends right?

Since I’m only days back from my annual conference which always puts me in a crab-assed mood for at least four weeks, I thought I’d bitch about Simon’s daycare.

Whenever there is any kind of holiday – they ask the parents to send in something for the entire class (25 kids) like Valentines (handwritten for 25 kids), Halloween loot bags (hand stuffed for 25 kids), Christmas cards (hand drawn for 25 kids), Easter eggs – you get the point. When it’s your child’s birthday, you’re expected to bring in a cake, all party supplies including decorations and loot bags for 25 kids. This is really fine and dandy – I usually create some sort of assembly line on the bed and put it all together the day before and haul it all in the next day. I’m happy that they have holiday festivities and I’m thankful to be a part of them but they don’t realize sometimes how taxing this is on the time of working parents.

After all, this is why my son is in their care for five days a week – because we are busy working parents. I suspected that was why all of the children attended the daycare but I think I may be wrong about that. In the monthly newsletter, they are constantly reminding parents to get their kids in by 9:00am in order for them not to disrupt the morning activity etc. 9:00am?? Rich and I are both on our third cup of coffee at the office by that time and Simon gets plunked off at the day care at 7:45am every day. We’d even drop him off earlier but he’s already the first kid in at that time. Where do these parents work? They also ask you to notify them if you’re going to pick up your child regularly before 4:00pm. Rich had to change his hours to finish one half hour earlier in order to pick Simon up before the 6:00pm closure – we were cutting it too close in the winter months with traffic etc. Again, I’d like to know where these parents work whose hours are 10:00am to 3:00pm every day. Sign me up – I’ll work for cheap!

Last week they had a Teacher’s Appreciation Day thing on the Friday and asked each child to bring in a handmade craft that would be presented to each of their teachers (3 in Simon’s class). We were given four days to complete this ‘project’ and all we had time to pull off was some construction paper, glitter glue and markers (thanks Mom for helping with that while I was away). They then asked for parent volunteers to come in on the Friday to watch the kids during the nap hour so the teachers could have a special lunch. They got five volunteers and even turned some away. I wasn’t one of them. I was working off site at a conference and Rich was at work after having received a written warning for missing so many days since January. Is anyone else in our situation???

It doesn’t end there – I brought in all of Simon’s party stuff yesterday because he was out sick on his actual birthday the week before. When I dropped it off with his teacher, she said “so we’ll see you later this afternoon?” Huh? She then tells me that parents of the birthday child usually come in for the afternoon party. Next week is his End of the Year party on Thursday afternoon which I will attend and take a half day off. I couldn’t do the same this week for his birthday party – sorry folks! Simon honestly wouldn’t care if I was there or not – he had his friends and cupcakes and balloons – that’s all he needs considering we’ve had not one, but two family birthday parties for him already. Needless to say, when I told his teacher I couldn’t make it back for the party – she nodded with a small frown and I left with enough guilt to make me feel like crappo-mom of the year.

I wish I could contribute more and be as involved as some of the other parents but we just can’t do it. If I could be there every day helping out and making objets d’art for every holiday – then I wouldn’t need to have Simon in full time child care in the first place. Maybe people are better at balancing out their schedules than I am. Or maybe they all work at this magic company at which you only need to work 4 hours a day and you get designated ‘craft and loot bag hour’ time.