As a working momma, I have to find good childcare for those hours when I am away from my little man. Everyday we leave him somewhere for about 10 hours so that we can go to work and earn money so that we can pay for daycare so that we can go to work so that we can earn money. Sorry, got a little carried away.
Anyways, he has been in daycare since he was 3 months old. The first daycare we used was Kids r Kids. It seemed pretty nice at first. He was there from 3 months to 2 years old. We took him out after we got one of the teachers there fired. I went to pick my little man up one day and saw the teacher hit one of the other kids with her flip-flop on the head. This happened at another parent’s house while the daycare was closed due to damage sustained by Hurricane Ike. The teachers from the school were watching 4 or 5 kids at a parent’s house during the day until the center could open back up. They fired her immediately and handled things very well but I just didn’t feel right about sending him back. Also, they took months to re-open after Ike and did not do a good job at keeping everyone informed as far as a timeline goes.
So, at 2 we moved him to Ivy Kids. Holy Shit! I don’t even know where to begin with this one. When he started there he excelled. He had wonderfully caring teachers. They made him feel welcome and loved every day. He looked forward to going to school. It was all he could talk about. They did a great job of potty training him and getting him ready to move up to the 3 year old room. When he moved into that room, it was more of the same. He excelled academically and was an all around good kid. He was very bright and perceptive. He learned so much thanks to his teachers. They never had any problems with him either except that he didn’t take a nap. But they were okay with that. Around Christmas of this past year, one of his teachers was fired. The school didn’t send a note home or talk to parents about it at all. One day she just wasn’t there anymore and there was one teacher for 17 3 year olds. It stayed that way until the beginning of January when the other teacher had to go out on medical leave due to a serious problem. The school didn’t send a note home or tell the parents, all they did was talk to the kids about it. one day she was there, the next she was gone. Then started the revolving door of teachers. Since January of this year, he had 4 or 5 different teachers. He started having more accidents at school and he started to cry and complain when it was time to go in in the morning. He really didn’t like school anymore. Things got even worse about 3 or 4 weeks ago with his latest set of teachers. Accidents every day, complaints from his teachers every day. They never had anything good to say about him. This went on for 2 weeks before HH and I had enough and went in to talk to them about all of this negativity. Instead, we were blindsided by the assistant director. According to her, Z was a behavior problem that was average academically and emotionally immature for his age. Yep, all of a sudden our above average child has regressed. Not only that, we were told that he had to be removed from his class on several occasions and put in the “Baby Room” because he was disrupting the entire class and influencing other children to act up. Yet we were never told about him being removed from his classroom. No phone calls or notes sent home. Nothing. We set up a conference that was supposed to be us, the director and his teachers for the following week. All that week he was suddenly good according to his teachers and there were no bad reports. There also wasn’t anything good said either. We went in for our conference that Thursday and it ended up just being with the director. According to her, everything that had been going on was attributed to two other “problem children” that were being removed from the center as well as the teacher changes. He wasn’t going to be moved back and they were going to call us if there when/if there were any other problems. We left the meeting hopeful that we were all on the same page. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The next week was a return to the old way of things. Complaints every day and incident reports to sign. HH had to sign an incident report because Z kicked his teacher accidentally when she was putting him down for his nap. Why was she close enough that he could kick her “accidentally”? He is 3 1/2 years old, you tell them to lay down and take a nap. It sounded to me like she was forcing him to lay down and take a nap. That is a violation of state licensing. Tuesday he came home wearing a pull-up saying that his teacher told him that he was a baby and he had to wear a baby diaper and that he was going to have to go in the baby room since he was a baby. The icing on the cake was this past Thursday. Z came home with an Illness Report stating that he repeatedly has accidents and his privates are swollen and red and smell badly. Hhmmm. That sounds oddly like diaper rash to me. But he doesn’t wear a diaper since he’s potty trained. Let’s see here, he went to school in underwear with his privates looking normal and he comes home with diaper rash. Sounds pretty messed up to me like they aren’t doing their job which is watching and taking care of the children. Needless to say, Thursday was his last day there. He didn’t go back there on Friday and today was his first day at his new school.
I just wish that these people were really in it for the children. Instead, it seems like all they care about is money. I am trusting you with the care of my child, why can’t you care for him as if he was your own? If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be in the childcare business.
Posted in Family, Motherhood, Rants
So, I am trying to vary up my extra-curricular activities so I started to crochet again. I think I am hooked (pun intended). Here is my most recent creation.
I got the pattern for him at Pepperberry Crochet and best of all it was free. He is so cute and super quick and easy. Finally, a finished project! I have so many other crochet projects that I want to do and I will post them up here and on Ravelry when they are finished.
Posted in Crochet
Like I said before, I started my new job. One of the biggest differences between where I was and where I am now is that instead of having an office with a door and two windows, I have a cubicle with no doors and no windows. I think it is probably 8 ft. x 8 ft. My cubicle is on the second floor of the building in this fairly small room that used to be a lunch room or break room. There are 7 cubicles in here. There is only one way in or out and I have to go by everyone else to get to mine. I chose to have the one in the very back corner because it offers at least a small amount of privacy. People have to know where to look to find me otherwise I am just forgotten. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
It’s been 3 years since I have had to work in a cubicle and there is a lot about cube life that I have to get used to. The biggest thing is that everyone can here what you say or what you listen to. I had gotten spoiled being able to listen to music through my iPhone using speakers so I wouldn’t have to wear headphones. That’s not the case now. I can’t exactly rock out or anything because of the other people around me. I hate having to wear headphones because I don’t like being tethered to my desk. The other thing about people being able to hear what you say is the gossip and phone calls. Before, I could use the phone for a personal call without having to worry about someone overhearing what I was saying. Not the case now. And God forbid you say something about someone else that you work with. The walls definately have ears and they are always listening.
Cubes are just so boring and drab. Who wants gray walls and a gray desk and black filing cabinets? Who wants two tiny, little shelves to put things on? They are just so impersonal, small and boring. There is even some kind of rule about plants. I don’t get that. Why can’t you have a little ivy on your desk or something. Anything would help to liven the place up.
Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to have a job. I just have to get used to living 10 hours of the day, Monday thru Thursday, in a little gray cube.
Posted in Bland, Rants, Work
For the past year or so I have had the Kindle on my Amazon.com wish list. I finally got it for Christmas from HH. I didn’t even expect it but it was definately much appreciated since I am such an avid reader and he is such an avid technology geek. I probably go through 2 books a week on average so I had been spending quite a bit of time at the library checking out books and then bitching to HH that they never have the ones that I am looking for.
I decided that I wanted the Kindle for a number of different reasons. I had read the reviews online and did a little bit of homework on the competitors since I have never used a reader like that before. The one thing that I was holding out for before I ran out and purchased it myself was that I had never seen one in person or messed with it so I was a little hesitant to go out and spend that much money.
I have had the Kindle for a few weeks now and here is what I think so far:
The Kindle 2 is lightweight and relatively small in size. It is smaller and lighter than most hardback books and weighs about as much as a paperback while being thinner than one. It fits in my purse and doesn’t weigh it down too terribly much.
It holds an enormous number of books. I know it all depends upon the file size and everything but come on, you would have to rent a U-Haul if you wanted to carry around all of the books that can be stored on the Kindle.
The books are less expensive than buying the paper versions. That means more money for me to spend on shoes and whatnot. Seriously, the average book price for Kindle through Amazon is $5-10 for your run-of-the-mill book. Textbooks and reference books cost more but they are still less than what you would pay for the print version. Plus, some books can even be found for free though so far I have only found the Classics.
The battery on it lasts forever which means more reading and fewer cords to drag around.
Books are downloaded through the Whispernet connection. This is Kindle’s wireless internet connection that is included in the purchase price. No extra fees for use!
There are a variety of other things that it can do like Minesweeper, store/convert documents, internet, audio books, play MP3s, blogs and newspapers.
It isn’t very attractive. It isn’t offered in any different colors, only white and there aren’t many case or skin options available.
There aren’t many options for sorting your books and the ones that exist aren’t very user friendly. There is no folder structure or anything like that. Either you use the available sort functions or you add tags to each individual book that can be searched.
There isn’t a whole lot of customization available. You can’t change the screensaver or the font, only the size of the font and spacing between lines.
There isn’t a light so reading in the dark isn’t an option unless you use an optional booklight that has to be purchased separately.
All in all, I love my Kindle 2 and it goes everywhere with me. HH hates the damn thing because all I ever want to do is read but that isn’t a new thing.
Posted in Me
One of the good things about this new job is all of the shopping that I get to do for it. I needed a whole new wardrobe for my new job.
When I worked in the plant, I wore Nomex (those fire-resistant jumpsuits) and steel-toed boots every day. I had one suit and a couple pairs of khakis to my name. I wore sweatpants, shorts, t-shirts or tank tops underneath my “blues” everyday. I had no slacks and just a few nice shirts that fit. How in the world was I going to manage to work in an office with that kind of a wardrobe? I would have to wear the same thing every third day!
So, after I found out about the job I talked to HH. I explained the situation to him and surprisingly he understood. He told me to go and buy whatever I needed to get me started for the new job even if it meant we had to take the money out of savings. I immediately went out and went shopping. I got shirts, slacks and of course…SHOES!
I know that I will have to do some more shopping and I should have done it all in the first place since I had my shopping pass from HH but I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about spending all of that money. I hate feeling guilty over shopping. It is one of my favorite things to do.
Posted in Me, Shopping, Work
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