The Nightmare Continues

Just because I haven't mentioned it in a few days doesn't mean that daycare does not continue to be an absolute nightmare. And I'm not being melodramatic in the least. If you are a parent, picture your child crying for about eight hours straight every day, only stopping to eat lunch and take a nap. We're talking about hysterical crying. All. Day. Long. I am not overdramatizing when I say that this is one of the worst things I have ever experienced as a parent, fourth only to the soft marker on E's ultrasound scan, dealing with Ella's hip issues when she was a baby, and Sadie's breathing issues when she was first born.

Monday night, Sadie was up crying every hour or so in her sleep. I truly believe it was the stress of knowing she was going back to school on Tuesday. Tuesday morning, she cried before we even left the house, begging us not to take her to school, begging one of us to stay at home with her. When I picked her up yesterday afternoon (Dean dropped her off, which is at least sparing me the simply awful drop-off tears), she was sitting in a little rocking chair crying her heart out. As soon as she sees me, she's fine. We get into the car, and she starts chatting away in her typical Sadie way. But her eyes are red and puffy from the crying, and she is an emotional wreck at home, dissolving into tears over nothing. This morning was more of the same, with Sadie begging and pleading for us not to take her to daycare.

The teachers keep telling me she'll eventually get used to it, but I'm so done. I can't even imagine how stressful it must be on such a little person to spend an entire day crying. It's not getting even a little bit better, and it's pure torture to sit here at work knowing that my baby is absolutely miserable.

Meanwhile, Ella's behavior is escalating. If I give Sadie the slightest attention, she screams at me about how I like Sadie better. Yesterday she enacted an elaborate play among her Little People in which the older child wondered why the parents loved the baby better. She didn't know I could hear her, so I really think that part of her must believe this to be true. I'm completely out of ideas. I've tried giving her more attention. But it doesn't matter. We played duck, duck, goose yesterday (my most hated game ever when it only consists of four people). I was giving Ella ALL my attention, but the minute I even LOOK at Sadie, Ella starts flipping out and ranting and raving about how I give Sadie all my attention. I honestly don't know if the kid is trying to push my buttons or what. She knows how stressed I am about the daycare situation (she's overheard Dean and I talking about it some, but she is also just uncannily in tune with my moods), and it's hard for me to tell whether she's playing off of that to redirect my attention onto her. If so, I suppose it has worked.