Thursday, January 14, 2010

Day Care and Long Night

As I indicated in my previous Nanny Saga post, my kids are back in day care. I don't want another nanny. I'm rather fed up with the whole process/concept. My wife, however, is still looking for another one - she doesn't like our son in day care. She's worried he'll get sick. I've told her he WILL get sick, but it won't be the end of the world. He's older now than he was when he was there last - he should not have as much trouble.

Well, now it looks like he's sick. He was screaming last night and needed to be held - he's been in bed with us (and with our daughter) most of the night. I'm not sure what the trouble is. It is frustrating when they are this age because they can't tell you what is wrong. He can almost talk, but not quite. My wife thinks it is an ear infection. I don't know what it is - it could be a sore throat as a precursor to a cold - his nose is not running, he hasn't been coughing. We may be able to tell more this morning. If it is an ear infection, that means a trip to the doctor for antibiotics. That is a pain generally, made more so by the fact that our regular doctor's office closed as the insurance company totally pulled out of having doctor's offices. Yes, I hate health insurance companies - this sort of crap just infuriates me. The old office was close to our house and we liked the doctors. Now we have to go all the way across town.

Maybe we'll be able to tell more this morning. In any case, I'm sure my wife wants him out of day care again more than ever - but I still don't. I don't want to deal with nanny crap again. I frankly don't trust anyone to be our nanny. With what we can afford to pay, I don't think we can get anyone of sufficient quality - and frankly, I don't want to mess with all of that again.

Kids get sick. We had a nice run of nearly 8 months when we had no sick kids at all. It also cost us an arm and a leg and led to two different big nanny dramas. I've had enough.

Unless my son gets so sick that a doctor orders us to take him out of day care, that's where I think he should stay. My daughter loves it there - she sees her friends and has lots to do. I think my son is warming up to it to - he's not outgoing like my daughter, but once he warms up to people and a situation, he's fine (not unlike myself). It remains to be seen if my wife can accept this - she's already extremely upset about this. It didn't help that day care people did something stupid yesterday - when we went to pick them up, our son was being wheeled around in the main hallway (which goes past the outside door) wearing only a thin white short-sleeved tshirt on top. They thought he was too warm in the room and took off his over shirt and then never put it back on. My wife has a big thing about cold - irrational really - but beyond that, taking him around without a shirt like that was just stupid.

My thought is that at least at day care when someone does something stupid, you can complain to a supervisor who can then check in on our son and make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again. With a nanny, we won't know if something stupid happens, and even if we find out, its not like we can verify it hasn't happened again. I told my wife to complain (well, complain again, she certainly did plenty of it already) today and that they will keep an eye on things.

It is going to be a long winter.

3 comments:

tina FCD said...

I know what you mean about being sick, catching colds from the other kids.
When I was watching A.J. he was sick a lot, got it from his sister that attended pre-school and now kindergarten, then proceeded to get me sick all the time. Ugh.
I need the money and I wanted to give my daughter a break from watching him, so I agreed to watch him again every other week. Another ugh!

Okjco said...

Two thoughts. Went through the challenges twenty five years ago. If I was faced with it today would consider a nanny and a monitoring system that allowed me to view my home from a remote location with cyber cams.

We solved the ear infections and the run of the mill colds very effectively with wheat grass juice. Some what of a hassle but stopped a series of chronic infection in our youngest daughter dead in its tracks after 6 months of office calls and antibiotics. We were told she had to have tubes put in her ears and had an appointment set. In the 10 days before the appointment we started her on the Wheat grass. All the infection was gone and stayed gone as long as we kept up the regimen.

tina FCD said...

I'll have to look up that wheat grass juice.