Daycare

after months of discussing, of weighing the pros and cons, of observing, of asking loads and loads of questions, hubby and i decided to send the boys off to daycare while we work. today is amir's first day of daycare. it was nerve wrecking, i was anxious. it will be the first time ever amir is off with strangers. before this he was either with my aunt or with my sister. for the first time, i wont get to text 'what is amir doing', 'has he eaten' and get lenghty reports in return (my sister would text me if amir even laughs a bit loud).

its scary but its for the best. a maid is out of the question for now. our house is not ideal for a maid to be left with a baby and a toddler. i wont be there to supervise, and there wasnt enough time to train and observe how a stranger would act in my house. amir is at a very active age, even hubby and i would lose patience with him...at least 6 times a day! i doubt a maid would be able to cope with him, and with asyraf who wont stop crying if he's awake.

i'm not due back at work for another month but we decided to send amir off earlier. get him used to the place, to the people but at the same time, and i'll be just a phone call (and a 3 minutes drive) away. we didnt want to send him earlier as we didnt want him to feel that he had to go just because asyraf arrived. we also wanted him to get used to having a baby brother around. plus, most importantly, his mummy wasnt ready to let him go (no matter how trying he can get with his...nak, nak, nak!!).

i hope we made the right choice. i visited the daycare and spoke to the owner last week. she convinced me that its a good place. there's not many children, for now, its a new place. there's only a couple of babies there so asyraf would be getting enough supervision. they have good activities (including iqra' and doa). the place look clean, and is well kept. the price is reasonable, and their overtime calculation is not over the top. its not the best possible option - that would be me staying at home and taking care of the boys - but its good enough.

i'm weary of certain things though. there are some words hubby and i would use with amir that people dont really use, like doo doo and wee wee. i personally dont like the words 'be**k' and 'kenc***'. we also teach amir english first before moving on to malay. like 'wet', once he grasp the word 'wet', we'll teach him 'basah'. after that, we use both words. of course, its not practical to use just english in our environment, but we make it a point to introduce english words first. i'm not all that confident that would remain the same once he starts daycare.

for asyraf, buais, pacifiers and walkers are a big no-no!! it takes a lot of patience to stick to my principles, especially with a baby as difficult as asyraf. even i nearly cave in a few times over the past 6 weeks. i just hope the workers there would take my requests seriously.

hubby says to give it 2 weeks. once the initial adjusting period is over, he says everything would be fine. then we'll start thinking about our next plan - how to get me to stay at home full time. for now, i think i'll take a 3-minutes drive to see how mummy's baby is doing...


he cried before leaving, so i had to give him kepoot (corn flakes) first...aw mannnn...look at his tears :(