My Son Goes To Daycare and This Is What It Feels Like

Silas and I were home for almost four months together before I had to go back to work full-time and we found him a daycare. While it was an amazing time, I definitely got to the point where I envied my husband for having a reason to leave the house every day (to go to work LoL). If we lived closer to town I would have made up excuses to go out, but we lived 30 minutes from anything so even just a drive to get a Mtn. Dew was ridiculously long and required 30 minutes of baby prep! So when it came time to go back to work I was sad to leave the Monkin all day but excited to do something different with my day.
I searched and searched for his first daycare, and we interviewed a boatload of home daycares. Ever want to be concerned for other children’s wellbeing? Visit home daycares. Some we were both appalled at (and Mike and I look at different things differently). We finally decided on one, and she seemed flexible and that was great. She would send me pictures of him throughout the day and there were other Littles there for him to learn new skills from. Then she got kind of wonky and inconsistent, and I realized my son wasn’t crawling because someone was carrying him around all day (she thought he was gorgeous and wanted him for herself, she’d say). Sooo we left there. We found another daycare run by two sisters out of their home and it looked fantastic. They had 28 years combined daycare experience, and their house (or the kiddo’ed part) looked exactly like every other daycare you’ve seen. Silas and I spent some time there over Christmas break and we liked it, so he started in January when I had to go back to work. These ladies worked hard to get licensed and to get food programs in place for the kids (awesome, everyone benefits). They teach Silas Spanish and I feel comfortable enough asking them to tell me how to “dice” something. So my little Mono (monkey) is learning Spanish and a boatload of other stuff.
This is all fine and good. This summer though I’ve gotten a lot of text messages from daycare asking if it was ok if they took the kids (usually just the two Littles, Silas and a 17-month-old girl) here or there. Since they’re free to go under two to most places, I would always say sure. But I can say that recently I’ve started feeling…I don’t know how to put it. Jealous I guess? They took my son to Sea World for the first time.

They put him in the wave pool for the first time. They took him on his first merry-go-round. In my head, these are all my things. They’re my job. I should take him to SeaWorld first and see how excited he gets over the water rides. I should put him on a merry-go-round for the first time and see his reaction. I’m his Mom. Mike and I should be doing these things, not his daycare teachers. And that makes me feel badly. I think Mike’s feeling this too. I’ve talked to other parents who are either working full-time or students full-time, and they’ve said very similar things. It’s like you keep worrying about what you’re going to miss. I was lucky to see him crawl first, walk first, and try to imitate words first. But I feel like I’ve missed out on this piece that seems to so small but is yet so important to me because I had memories of these things as a kid. I don’t want his memories to involve his two nannies.
We work hard to create new memories of fun stuff we do together as a family (like drive out to Hamilton Pool Preserve this weekend), but I still get dumpy whenever I get those “Can we take the kids to ________?” texts. I suppose it’s part of life.

What’s been the hardest part of parenting for you so far?