"After All, Tomorrow is Another Day"

I must say, four days in, and I am loving Charlotte's new daycare lady, Miss D.  More importantly, Charlotte is loving Miss D. Monday, Chris and I went together to drop Charlotte off.  We were there for a little while and when we went to leave, Charlotte made one little noise of protest and that was it.  Each day since, she's only given Chris a wave bye-bye and blown him kisses.  When I go to pick her up, she's busy playing and running around, so busy that she doesn't run straight up to me and cling to my legs like she did at the other place.

What's also wonderful is that the other kids are not all there everyday.  On Monday, it was just Charlotte and the girl closest in age, Ava. On Tuesday, there were three, including Charlotte.  On Wednesday, four. And today and tomorrow, five.  Charlotte gets a lot of attention, and most days, Charlotte is the first one there, so she gets plenty of one-on-one time with Miss D.  On Tuesday, D took Charlotte, Ava and Addy to the nearby park, where they had a picnic and met up with some of D's friends, who also watch toddlers (one is the grandmother to triplets and watches them everyday, can't imagine!).  They saw geese and had a great time, according to D of course.

And of course, Chris is happy to not have to give Charlotte breakfast in the morning.  It saves him a lot of time, and Dione makes yummy breakfast treats like pancakes, scrambled eggs, waffles and French toast. The food overall is varied and much better than the other daycare.

I've already met the parents of all the other children, as they all seem to arrive for pick up at the same time I do.  I'm not sure I met a single parent at the big daycare. They spend time chatting with D, and I can tell she's got a good rapport with everyone. So yeah, in short I'm very happy with this new arrangement. Charlotte seems super happy almost to the point of not wanting to leave in the evening.

Also in good news:  We had our second food challenge yesterday with lentils, to which she had tested positive on the RAST test.  It wasn't as long as the first challenge (thank goodness!), and it was pretty apparent that she's not allergic to lentils, which is great since she loves them and they're such a good source of iron, fiber and protein.  So really, the only confirmed allergies are peas and sesame seeds. And that's it for food challenges for now, thankfully.  We need to do one with cashews at some point, but Charlotte's allergist recommends waiting until she's old enough to describe what she's feeling.  We might do it around her second birthday.  In the meantime, we're avoiding all nuts, which is fine.

The sleeping has improved drastically.  Pushing her bedtime to 7:30 seems to work really well, although she'd be happy until 8 or 9 if we let her.  Charlotte still lets out a cry sometimes when we first put her to sleep, but not the hysterical sobbing like last week.  It probably has to do with the nonstop playing she does at D's.