Weekend Update

Hi everyone! 

I hope you all had a blessed weekend! I surely did!

I took Valerie to the park on Saturday and she made a new friend! A little 8 year old girl named Bailey. At first I was surprised at how nice she was, playing with a younger girl like Valerie, but they really got along well. I went and sat down and got to know Bailey’s mommy, Katherine. She was very nice as well. It turns out, she live just a block over from us. I asked her if she thought that Bailey would like to come and play with Valerie some time, since there is quite the age difference between the two of them. She said that she didn’t see a problem with that. 

I warned Katherine that since Valerie was much younger, and still very much a toddler, that we weren’t used to having an older kid around the house, and Bailey may have to follow some rules that she may be too old for. Katherine didn’t think that would be an issue. I told her to make sure that Bailey had an extra change of clothes with her when she came to play. We are going to have her over on Next Saturday to go ton the Columbus Zoo. 

In other News, my husband, Vinny, has his private Pilot’s license, and has been working towards his instrument rating! He is almost done with his training, and will be be completing the required hours soon! When that happens, we will start planning some family vacations where we can fly ourselves! ! Wont’t that be fun.  Stay tuned for some posts about General Aviation flying with children, and how to cope with long GA flights, as soon as I get some good ideas! 

Vinny and I are pretty involved with our church, and Like I mentioned earlier, I wanted to start working in the church Nursery, to get practice for when I open my home daycare. This was the first weekend that I would be working in the nursery, and it was great! 

It was myself and one of the other mommy’s talking care of 6 little ones, including Valerie. I don’t know how other parishes run their nursery, but ours is very relaxed. We don’t have any set age limit for the little ones. The only requirement is that any child, regardless of age, who is placed in the nursery, has to wear diapers, and go through the same routine as the other little ones. The little ones are dropped off at the nursery, and are either put in playpens or rockers if they’re under one year old. If they’re toddlers, they get to play in the main area. We give the little ones a morning bottle of formula, and morning nap. The older kids get sippy cups of juice. Everyone gets a morning nap. We have enough cribs for 8 little ones to have their own space. Some kids get picked up after services. Those who stay longer, while their parents are in bible study, get a lunch, followed by another nap. We only have two highchairs, so we start with the youngest first, and work our way up to older kids.  The younger ones get another bottle formula before being put down for an afternoon nap. 

I have been told that sometimes we get the some of the older children who are getting baptized, since they are supposed to be babies in the eyes of God, on the day of their Baptism, they spend the morning in the nursery with the other little ones, until its time for them to go to the Chapel to get baptized, then they come back and play unit their parents are ready to take them home. Mary, the other mother who works in the nursery, told me that last year they had a fifteen year old girl who was adopted from Romania, and she spent the day in the nursery. I was fascinated by this, I asked her to explain to me how that worked.

Mary said the girl was treated just like any other baby under one year old, she was in diapers, and a dress, with a pacifier on a lanyard clipped to her dress. She was placed in a playpen with a one year old girl. Mary said that the girl didn’t speak English, so it was just like any other baby that was babbling, and was responded to by cooing. She would check the girl’s diaper whenever she made her rounds. Ethel, an older lady who used to run the nurser, fed the girl a morning bottle of formula, before burping her. She was sent to the chapel for her baptism after her bottle. Mary said they the must have checked her diaper 5 or six times before she was wet. The girl was put down in one of the cribs for her morning nap after coming back from being baptized. Mary was the one to go and check on on her after her nap, finder her diaper wet. She carried her to the changing table and changed her, before putting her in a playpen again. Since her new parents were going to meeting with the minister after services, she was still there after most of the little ones were picked up. Ethel get her out of her playpen and into a highchair for lunch, since was technically one of the youngest. Ethel put a bib on her and fed her 2 jars of baby food, prunes and strained carrots, before giving her to Mary for her afternoon bottle. Mary said she remembered that she was a little fussy during her feeding, but eventually ate both jars of food. Mary said she took her to a rocking chair and fed her her bottle of formula, while rocking her. After burping her, she was put down for her afternoon nap in one of the cribs. Mary said that after 20 minutes, she heard the girl crying on the baby monitor, and went in to check on her. Turns out, the little one just had just made a stinky and needed to be changed. 

I couldn’t believe that! It must have been quite the sight to see! Mary said that its not very common for us to get baptisms that old. She said that the girl was only in the nursery that day, before going back to being a big girl. She’s learned English and is on the church’s youth group now. I wonder of I will ever get to see something like that in the nursery? 

In other news, it looks like my niece, Beth, is going to be coming to stay with us some time after Halloween. We are still trying to figure out how we are going to handle this, since Robert doesn’t know how long Beth is going to be with us yet. I will let you know as soon as I know more. 

Thanks to listening to my little weekend update! See y’all tomorrow!

-Veronica