Daycare and Kinder years

I've gone back to work full time so with some trepidation I put the children into daycare. Scorpio can take them on Fridays so they don't have to be there a full week. With all the travel to work and back it ends up being quite a long day for them.

Surprisingly Cyclone does just fine, some days he doesn't want to go but that's pretty normal. He doesn't like walking into the room but if everyone is doing something else and the blocks are out ready to play he zeros right in without a second look.
After awhile he even waves goodbye with a smile on his face.

At pick up time he is bursting to show me his latest creation and beams when we all tell him how amazing it is. He gets very distressed at the thought of breaking it down at pack up time and fairly soon they don't ask.

One of the assistants, Mimi really really gets his number. She makes an incredible fuss of his creations and when I pick him up she calls to me - "oh you MUST see this beautiful train Cyclone has made, it is so wonderful we have put it up on the shelf so it doesn't get broken by anyone". She takes his worries, very very seriously and never once treats him like a child - she treats him the same as she would her own friends I think. I ADORE this lady.

But the blocks must be put away eventually and Cyclone seems to think it's ok if I take a photo. I have so many on my phone right I can't fit in anything else and even though he never asks about the pictures I can't bring myself to delete them.

At the end of the year the centre does a play. They rehearse alot and about a week before the boy in the lead role of 'granpa' decides he doesn't want to do it. Somehow they talk Cyclone into it. For the next week I get mobbed by various staff members excitedly telling me how wonderful he is, and how impressed they are. It's not that he is the next Johnny Depp, it's they are so proud of what he is able to do.

It's obvious that his quirks endear him to everyone at daycare and for a minute there I dream of being a stage mum...cos they're normal right?


I look back and can now see why Cyclone was able to do that, when usually anyone he doesn't know looks at him he screams abuse.

It's a play. It's scripted. He knows exactly what is going to happen next and with all the rehearsing he knows when people are going to laugh and why they think its funny.

Ahhh hindsight.