Rob and I are very seriously considering moving Kaylee to another daycare, for a number of reasons. We don’t thinks she’s in danger or anything, but we just have some concerns. And if I’ve learned anything while writing for Parent over the years, it’s that the number one rule in choosing child care is to trust your gut.

We toured a different place this morning, and it’s more conveniently located and seems to have nicer facilities. We were already interested, and then the director told us about the Spanish teacher they have on staff. And the music teacher. And they have a computer lab. And a kid was sitting nearby playing a keyboard.

I probably would have immediately asked for a Sharpie and a sticker so I could go ahead and put Kaylee’s name on a cubby, but the center director was going on about how we need to weigh the decision carefully, etc., etc. I had a feeling that shouting “I AM READY TO ENTRUST YOU WITH MY FIRST BORN!” might have made me seem a little impulsive.

So we’re waiting. I’m looking over the pamphlet she gave me, and sometime next week I’ll take Kaylee by to see what she thinks of the place and the people. But there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to choose that daycare.

That means I’m in for an awkward conversation in the near future. Because, see, while I do have some concerns about the old daycare, I also really like a lot of the people there. They’re friendly and caring and they LOVE my daughter. I don’t want to hurt their feelings.

I’m trying to think of ways to break it to them gently:

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

“I’ve found someone else, and I just feel like it’s time to move on. Let’s stay friends, though, ok?”

“We’re just not in the same place anymore, you know? And also, I SAW you looking at that girl in the supermarket yesterday.”

Maybe not that last one.

Dear Kaylee,

I can’t believe a year has passed since that day I sat in my hospital bed, cradling you and alternating between pure panic and utter happiness. You were so adorable, helpless, and very, very loud. I must admit that I had a few moments when I wondered if I’d gotten in over my head with you. As someone who can barely get myself out of bed on time in the morning to get to work, the idea of adding this wailing little bundle of responsibility to my world was, well, daunting. I left the hospital feeling very happy, and very scared.

But look where we are now. We’ve managed to survive this first year, and all of us still have all of our limbs. We’ve been through poop, vomit, an awful lot of coughing, and you once peed directly on my lap, and yet we’re still all right. It turns out that you, your dad and I go pretty well together, and I didn’t need to be so scared after all.

This month you’ve taken to babbling as if you’re having a conversation in a baby language that we don’t understand. You mimic the lilt and tone of adult conversation so well that we often wonder what it is you think you’re saying. You definitely have ideas you are trying to communicate, but we haven’t figured out how to translate yet. If only your lazy mother had gone ahead and taught you sign language instead of watching all that Ninja Warrior, then maybe we’d be having intellectual conversations by now. Sorry about that. But even though you can’t sign “Mommy,” you’re probably already developing a strategy for conquering the Dancing Stones, and that’s important.

Speaking of dancing, you’re doing a lot of that now. You’ve always sort of wiggled to music, but lately you’ve been letting the music take over your whole body. You usually start by shaking your head back and forth, an action that causes you to fall over about 75% of the time. When you manage to stay upright, you stand there and wiggle your body, wave your arms, and generally just groove to the music. You really enjoy the times your dad is playing Rock Band, but you’re just as likely to start dancing in the grocery store when the muzak catches your ear.

You and your best friend have become even more attached to each other lately, with both of you calling out “hi!” to each other as soon as we arrive at daycare each morning. That’s impressive, because we usually can’t get you to say hi to anyone. And sadly, Little Miss Best Friend is moving to a new daycare center tomorrow. I know that you’re only one year old, and I know you’re going to make a lot of new friends over the course of your life, but I’m really sad that you’re already losing your very first friend. You two were born five days apart, and somehow that led to an instant bond between you. There are other kids in the infant room that are pretty close to your age, but from day one it’s always been you and her.

To wrap this up, I’m going to quote from an e-mail Daddy sent me this morning, because I think it does a good job of summing up how I feel: “I’m not going to sit here and say that there aren’t nights where my only wish is that she would go back to sleep … and there has been enough illness lately that I would worry about the CDC having us quarantined, but … this year has gone by incredibly fast. It seems like only yesterday that she was just a sleepy eyed newborn and I had plenty of time to think up all sorts of cool things to share with my daughter. Now she is 1 and I can’t help but think, ‘Wait … I only get 18 more of these?’”

Happy birthday, my beautiful girl.

Love,

Mommy

Kaylee and I attended her daycare buddy’s first birthday party on Saturday, and now I can feel myself slipping into the suburban-mom-competitive-birthday-party mindset.

I’ve been very blasé about planning Kaylee’s party — which is this coming Saturday — mostly because she’s only a year old and she’s not going to remember this anyway. My approach has sort of been to take lots of naps and assume the details will come together on their own. Food? Yeah, there will probably be some. Cake? Oh, I should probably remember to order that. Balloons? There are supposed to be balloons?

Then we went to the buddy’s party, and I’ve learned that my party-planning skills are completely inadequate. I left the party having realized that Kaylee’s party is only a week away and I HAVE NOT PURCHASED A SINGLE STREAMER. I have no “Happy Birthday” banner. I have no serving dishes, and I have not reserved an inflatable bounce house for the neighborhood kids — who I’ve neglected to invite anyway.

At the very least, I have now been spurred to order a cake (after work today, for sure) and think about what food I’ll be giving people. But I still can’t shake the feeling that I’ve just awakened from a year-long slumber to realize that I’m getting married in a few days and I need to go ahead and get that wedding planned.

But now that I think about it, Rob and I managed to pull together our own wedding at the last minute, and we were 100% successful at not sweating the little details. Our goal was to make sure we were married by the end of the day, and what do you know, it worked. Even though my wedding dress had a couple of wrinkles in the skirt, and even though wind and rain kept people from mingling outside like we’d planned, I consider my wedding to have been a perfect event, full of nothing but happy memories.

And I guess that’s the point. Saturday will be a day of happy memories and lots of photos of Kaylee with cake smeared on her head — no matter how many streamers are hanging from the ceiling. Guests will either enjoy that or they won’t, but I’ll still get lots of adorable pictures.

Assuming I remember to order that cake.

I was just looking for something in my purse, which is not especially cavernous considering that I’m a mom. But still, I managed to find a pacifier buried at the bottom. Where did this come from? How long has it been there? I have no idea.

I ask you, dear readers, to let me know whether I’m the only one who leads the kind of disorganized life that results in random baby items appearing in random places.

When I dropped Kaylee off at daycare this morning, her teacher presented me with this Mother’s Day gift that Kaylee made:

I know Kaylee wasn’t really aware that it was a present for Mommy, and that she was mostly just playing in some paint when she made it, but it still made me pretty happy.

All I’d really expected her to give me this year for Mother’s Day was a cough, which would fit in with the theme of Mother’s Day gifts she’s given me so far in her life. (Last year’s gift was the excruciating pain of labor.)

I like this better.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there, and I hope your kids made you a cute craft, too.

Kaylee is starting her transition to the toddler room at daycare this week, and I am trying my best not to be filled with trepidation.  There are big changes ahead, and I can’t help worrying about how she’ll adjust.

A few months ago, a coworker stopped by to tell me that her son was being transitioned, and that the daycare had given her a list of new requirements: no more bottle, no more crib, only one nap a day, etc.  She was concerned.

Now I’m concerned.

My biggest worry is about nap time.  The kids in the transitions room nap on cute little kid-sized cots, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how they expect my daughter to hold still on one of those.  Cribs have BARS for a very specific reason.  (So I don’t wake up in the middle of the night to find Kaylee climbing into the towel/bib drawer in her dresser.)

I ran into that coworker again a couple of days ago and gave her the grave news that Kaylee was transitioning.  She’s less concerned now.  I guess her son has actually adjusted rather well to the toddler room, and the one-nap-a-day rule has made her weekends less chaotic.

Interesting.

So this could go ok?  The daycare teachers know what they’re doing?  My kid won’t come home hoarse from crying because of the torture she endures every day in the transitions room?  Are you sure?

I guess I need to relax and trust that her teachers will do their best to make the transition smooth — that they really do have my daughter’s best interests at heart.  (After all, they are moving her a little early because they think she’s bored and isn’t being challenged enough in the infant room.)  And I need to trust that my daughter can handle it.

So I’ll do my best not to panic anymore.

But when she abandons me to go away to college, all bets are off.

There are certain rites of passage that everyone must go through on their journey to adulthood. Kaylee has a long way to go, but now, at least, she can officially cross “get attacked by shellfish” off her list.

Grandma took us out to dinner at Red Lobster last night, and as we were leaving we decided to stop at the lobster tanks to see what Kaylee thought of these bizarre-looking creatures.

She was fascinated. Her little eyes were wide, and her mouth was hanging open while she watched the lobsters … well, do nothing, actually. She was in awe, but I thought they were being a little boring. There, in the last days of their lives, I thought they might be living it up a little more, having a party and enjoying life while they could. But no, they just stared at Kaylee while she stared back.

Then I noticed that the lobsters in the next tank over were moving around a little more, so Kaylee and I scooted down to get a better look at them. I knelt down and balanced Kaylee on my knee so she could get a good look, and Grandma leaned in to see how Kaylee was reacting.

What we didn’t immediately realize was that we were witnessing a lobster avalanche. In one corner of the tank, several lobsters were piled on top of each other, and the ones on the bottom had had just about enough of it. As those lobsters tried to struggle free, they knocked another lobster off the top of the mountain. That lobster fell, landed on another lobster, and through the magic of lobster physics was launched straight up to the top of the tank.

This all happened very quickly, and Grandma and I didn’t quite know how to react. From our vantage point, which was right up against the glass and below the open top of the tank, it really seemed like that lobster was about to make a break for it. Unfortunately for us, that would have meant that one of us was about to get a lobster stuck in her hair. An angry lobster. With claws. (Yes, those claws had rubber bands wrapped around them, but this lobster was determined to escape. Don’t you think he had a plan for removing his shackles too??)

Naturally, we decided to get out of the way. There may have been a little bit of shrieking involved. Or at least some concerned exclamations.

In our rush to get away from the lobster tank, we managed to scare the heck out of Kaylee, who burst into tears. It took us a couple of minutes to calm her down, mostly because we were too busy laughing at ourselves for freaking out. (In case you’re wondering, the lobster’s elaborate escape attempt did not work. His tail came up out of the water just enough to give us all a hearty splash, but then he fell back into the tank, where he is most likely hatching his next plan.)

We’re planning to take Kaylee to the zoo this summer so she can see that giraffes exist outside of her “What Makes You Giggle?” book. I just hope she forgets the lobster incident by then, because I don’t want her to think that every new animal she meets is going to try to jump on her face.

Look, I know this horse is dead.  I know that you know how sick my family has been, that babies are germ factories and blah, blah, blah, BLAH.  I’ve only said it all about 90,000 times.

But I really think she’s going to kill me this time.

Have I mentioned I’m sick?  Have I?  Oh, you knew that already?  Well.

It’s just, I feel the need to say it again, because maybe someone out in Internet-land has a suggestion for how I can keep my body from disintegrating into a mass of phlegm that still manages somehow to have a hacking cough.  Anyone have a plastic bubble they can sell me?

Oh and by the way, I’m sick.  Did I tell you that yet?

I know that Kaylee’s cute little immune system is just learning how to flex its muscles.  It sees a germ, invites it in, chews it up and spits it out, and then Kaylee’s a little stronger for the exercise.  I just wish her immune system would stop spitting those germs on ME.  Because my older, creakier, flabbier immune system just doesn’t have the energy to keep this up.  I’m pretty sure it’s on the verge of throwing in the towel and just letting me perish.

And in case you were wondering: Yes, in fact, I am sick.  Thanks for asking.

Someone has learned to smile for the camera, which makes picture-taking a lot more fun.  Now if she would just learn to get through the day without licking other children, we’d all be a lot happier and less consumed with illness.

Kate just sent me a link to an article suggesting that maybe, just maybe, I’m not the worst mother of all time for putting my daughter in daycare. According to a study:

“Sending children to day-care at an early age could protect them against leukemia, perhaps by exposing them to certain infections, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.”

So wait, there’s a purpose to all this snot? Hallelujah. I’ll try to remember that next time I can’t sleep because Kaylee’s up all night coughing.