Eight Mama Lessons Learned After Starting My Youngest In Day Care

1. Putting medicine in a glass of chocolate milk with a spoonful of sugar (thank you Mary Poppins) is way easier than chasing my three-year-old around the house for 30 minutes or trying to reason with him why he needs to take it.

2. Halloween candy should always be kept in the house for emergency bribing situations.

3. Baths somehow calm everyone down and change the energy dynamic instantly.

4. Pirate’s Booty and Mama snuggles can cure a fever.

5. Garlic-stuffed green olives plus aforementioned Pirate’s Booty will do for Mama’s dinner when spending the evening in the Kids’ Urgent Care for my one-year-old. (Daddy was in the night before with our three-year-old.)

6. Being connected all the time and those bright red message notifications on my cell phone are negatively impacting my non-work hours. Despite the above circumstances I was enjoying my time with my boys. We were joking and my three-year-old was chatting me up. At a red stop light, I noticed a work email had come in. Of course, I instantly read it and my brain immediately switched back to work mode. The message frustrated me and I started problem solving in my head. While I was trying to be present, I was aware that it took a good 30 minutes before I shut that part of my brain off again and got to just be with my boys to take in the silliness of bath time and our nightly jammies wrestling match.

I commit to not checking my work email when it’s mama time.

7. My sick days are no longer mine. They are no longer days I can bank on adding to my Christmas vacation at the end of the year for a nice long holiday. Instead they will be used to watch my kids who can’t go to school/day care because they are contagious with something they caught at day care. Now, being with my kids who want extra snuggles when they are sick is not a bad way to spend a day, but it requires different calendar planning than in the past.

8. Thank God for meditation and running. If I wouldn’t have done both of these early this morning, I would have yelled a lot more and given up on the medication dispensing (which means my child would be contagious longer and I’d be taking more sick days to hang out with him).

I think I’m going to go get me another garlic-stuffed olive. Good night!

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