Break out the party
streamers and champagne! After months of deliberation, the wife has finally
settled on Option B, which is a Montessori school called Ivy’s House.
I have one vivid memory during my time at a Montessori school when I was a kid.
During snack time, the teacher would always choose one person to peel and cut
the carrots. I thought it was the coolest job ever and always wanted to do it.
Whenever snack time was approaching, I would always try to be on my best
behavior and super engaged in whatever activity I was doing, hoping the teacher
would notice and choose me, but she never did. I could never figure out why.
It's always bothered me a bit.Well, it doesn’t matter anymore because I can
now peel and cut all the carrots I want to my heart’s content!
One thing that had prevented us from going to Ivy’s House earlier was the fact
that they require the children to be able to walk, which Caitlyn couldn’t do at
the time. Even now, they say because Caitlyn still isn’t walking very well on
her own, the wife needs to be in the classroom with her to help.
This sounds a bit absurd to me because we’re paying them to help take care of
our baby, not the other way around. Because of this, the wife has been mulling over how soon to start sending Caitlyn. If we started sending
her now, the wife might have to stay at the school with her for a few weeks. However, if we held out long enough until Caitlyn started walking better, then the wife wouldn't have to stick around the school.
I
suppose it all comes down tohow much longer the wife can stand the baby before
she's driven completely crazy by her, which apparently is right now, because Caitlyn will start going to Ivy's House on Monday. I don't know how this will turn out, but things should be interesting starting next week.
While we’ve made progress
in getting Caitlyn to say a few more words (she can now say da-da, go-go, and ma-ma), we’ve also
taken a few steps back in other areas.
Caitlyn’s always been pretty good at
going to sleep at bedtime and naptime, but recently, she’s been refusing to go
to sleep whenever the wife tries to put her to bed. When I’m the only one
around taking care of her, sleep time is a snap, so I suggested to the wife
that during bedtime, she say goodbye to the baby and then physically leave the
apartment for a few minutes.
Sure enough, right after the wife leaves, Caitlyn
will march herself straight to her room and then ask to be put in her crib to
sleep. Even cuter is when she realizes she forgot her pacifier and then makes a beeline for the kitchen to get it before heading back to her room.
I’m not exactly sure what
to make of this besides the fact that maybe the baby thinks the wife is fun to
be around and doesn’t want the party to stop. Which means that I’m the boring
party-pooper, leaving the baby no other option but to go to sleep when I’m around.
Or, could it be due to the fact that I rule the roost with an iron fist and refuse to cave in to the demands of a crying and whining baby like the wife does. I like to think it's for this reason that Caitlyn behaves better when she's around me. Also, getting Caitlyn to sit
quietly in the car has become more of a hassle. The wife usually sits in the
backseat with her, which leads to a lot of whining and fussing, most
likely because she wants to be held.
I’ve also come up with a solution for
this. Whenever it’s time to go, I’ll have the wife say goodbye and leave the
apartment first. Then, we’ll follow a few minutes later. What Caitlyn doesn’t
know is that the wife is quietly hiding in the front passenger seat of the car. Therefore,
she doesn’t bother whining or screaming because she knows I won’t be picking her
up any time soon.
Now that the wife has experienced first hand what it's like to have the
baby go to bed by herself and quietly sitting in her car seat by herself, she's speechless and at a
loss for words. And that's led to a lot of wondering on her part as to what she's doing to make the baby so naughty. I got two words of advice for her, 'iron fist.'
With Caitlyn slowly on her
way to being a walking whiz, our focus has now turned back to her language development. About two months ago, she started saying, “Da-da,” but has since
then, stalled at that.
The wife has been looking
into this and says that the cause might stem from the fact that we speak
different languages to our baby. She speaks Mandarin, while I speak English to
Caitlyn. Could there be a possibility that we’re confusing her and that she has
no idea how to process what we’re saying and which language to say first?
The wife’s suggestion is
that we stop speaking two different languages to her and just stick to one. The
notion is that hearing two or more languages will confuse the child and lead to
problems in acquiring language. Hearing just one main language will allow it to
stand a better chance of being processed without competition from other
languages.
I wholly reject this idea. First
of all, Caitlyn understands things that we say to her, whether it’s in Mandarin
or English. If she were truly confused, then she would not be able to
comprehend what we’re saying.
Also, there really is no
research that shows that being raised in a bilingual family stunts your
language development. Yes, there might be a slight delay in the speech-language
department, but over time, it has been show that bilingual children catch up to
their peers and have the added advantage of being able to speak two languages
proficiently, which in the long run, can open many doors that might have otherwise
been closed.
And the icing on the cake
is that there may be benefits from bilingual language learning, as children who
are fluent in at least two languages have strengths in metalinguistic awareness
(the ability to think about languages), as well as in cognitive skills, such as
memory, the ability to learn new information, and speech. Is that Harvard that
I see in the distant future?
Every time we take our baby
out and people find out that she’s not walking on her own yet, we get a sympathetic
look from them and the added line, “You know, babies that crawl longer are
smarter,” as if that makes everything all better. Well, no more! As of last week, Caitlyn has official begun walking on her own! They may be a few
off-balanced steps, but they are steps in the right direction.
With so many people making
the comment that babies who crawl longer turn out smarter, I wanted to see if
there was any truth behind it. Unfortunately, while there hasn’t been any
research that has sufficiently proven this, crawling does have its benefits,
which may be how this old wive’s tale came to be.
Crawling stimulates different
areas of the brain and also coordinates the use of both eyes, feet, ears, and
hands.
Crawling is believed to increase the production of myelin, the substance that
coats nerve cells. Myelin helps in the process of sending and receiving
messages more quickly and efficiently.
Crawling strengthens a baby’s
neck, arms, joints, and muscles. This makes a baby’s gross and fine-motor
skills more fluid.
The repeated movements from
crawling stimulate and help develop the brain’s neural connections in a baby,
which in turn makes the brain more efficient in controlling cognitive processes
such as understanding, concentration, and memory.
With all these positive
benefits, maybe our baby can crawl her way to Harvard!
Because it’s the wife that
spends the majority of the day taking care of the baby, and because she’s the
one that will be taking her to and from the nursery, she has ruled that she has
precedence over which place to send our baby too.
However, being the generous
person that she is, she has graciously agreed to listen to my opinions, think about them for a
minute, and then promptly toss them out the window. And that is how Option A
came to be crossed off the list.
To make sure she was making
the right choice with Option B, she went to sit in on a class this week.
However, she came out of it thoroughly disappointed. The staff members were not
friendly or helpful and the teachers just stood around watching the
babies while they crawled around.
And that’s why we now have Option C. Let’s compare
again.
Option B: Pros
It’s gotten high marks from
people online.
It’s in a better part of
the city.
It actually has a small
class size – 8.
While it’s still considered
far, the wife discovered she can take the bus there, which means we cut down on
cab fare.
Cons
Equipment and supplies are a
bit dirty and rundown.
More expensive.
Staff not helpful or
friendly.
Option
C: Pros
Staff is more friendly and
organized.
Cleaner.
Cheaper. The cost of full-day
tuition is the same as half-day tuition at Option B.
Cons
It’s further away. No
convenient bus or subway routes.
Has a lot more students
All this has led to a lot of
back and forth debating between the wife and herself all week over which place
to pick.
To me, it’s not that
difficult to make a choice here. Of course, this coming from the person that
took over a week to decide on which crib mobile to buy. But that’s like comparing
apples to oranges. It's a completely different case and set of circumstances.
When
there are many factors
that go into making a decision, you need to figure out which ones are
the most
important to you and which will have the most impact.
Option C is not
that much cleaner than Option B to make a difference, and as I've said
before, as long as the teachers are keeping a watchful eye on the
children, that's all I ask for. Therefore, I think the deciding factors
here are class size and money.
The tuition at Option C
might be cheaper, but the money you’re saving is just going to go into the
taxi driver’s pocket from all the round-way trips you'll be making.
Also,
because Option has such a high number of students, the chances of her
getting sick will be greater, which means we'll have to shell out even
more money for rides to the doctor's and for the medical bill. Option B is obviously the
way to go, but will the wife listen to a humble peasant's opinion? Stay tuned as we find out together!
The wife is at her wit’s
end dealing with the baby. She’s proposed that we send our child to a daycare
or nursery for half the day to help get her accustomed to not having Mommy or
Daddy around. I tend to agree with this. If we don’t nip this in the butt now,
it’ll only become that much harder to separate Caitlyn from us as she gets
older. And by that time, the wife will probably have lost all her hair.
In an ideal world, the
daycare/nursery of our choosing would meet all of our requirements. But we live
in a far from ideal world. There has to be a bit of give and take. You have to
decide what you can and can’t tolerate in a place, and then make a decision
based off of it.
There are two places that
we are considering. Here are the pros and cons of both.
Option A:
Pros
It’s literally right around
the corner from our house. It’s convenient, and for a worrier like me wife,
very ideal for her to pop by at any time to check up on the baby.
They recently relocated to a new building, so the facility is brand new and
everything inside is clean.
Currently, there are only 3
other babies enrolled there, so class size would be small. The teacher would have
an easier time managing the babies and keeping an eye on them.
Cons
The wife isn’t exactly keen
on the area that we currently live in right now and fears the quality of
teachers here are not up to par. She worries they won’t take good care of our
baby.
There hasn’t been much
feedback or reviews online about this place, so who knows if they are good or
not.
Option B:
Pros
It’s well-established with
a lot of positive reviews online. The wife feels a bit more safe about sending
our baby to a place like this.
It’s in a better part of
the city.
Cons
It’s about a 30 minute ride
away. Wouldn’t be convenient for the wife who would have to take a taxi there
and back since she doesn’t have a car. She’d run herself ragged shuttling back
and forth. And what if there’s an emergency and she needs to get there quickly?
When we went there for open
house, I found a lot of the equipment to be run down, dirty, or broken.
More expensive.
Larger class size. Will our
baby really get the attention that she needs? Plus, with more kids, that means
there's a greater chance of getting sick.
There’s a waiting list. Who
knows how long it would be before we got in.
If you haven’t guessed it
yet, I’m all for Option A while the wife is all for Option B. My main deciding
factor is that it’s convenient. I’m not really concerned whether or not the
teachers are world-class educators because our baby is not primarily going
there to learn. She’s going there so she can get used to being away from Mommy.
As long as the teachers keep can an eye on her and keep her safe, that’s all I
could ask for.
Somehow, the wife feels that if we do try out
Option A, we’re going to be stuck there and has really balked at testing it
out. Obviously, if the place isn’t a good match, we can always try the place of
her choosing. I highly doubt a nursery would hold our daughter hostage and say
that we can't leave. The sooner we start sending her to a nursery, the
quicker and easier it will be for her to get used to not always having to cling
to Mommy.
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