Apparently, my little Stephanie is very protective of her baby brother. It has been reported that she follows him around the daycare and watches over him. If he happens to go into a corner of the room that she can't see, and another child follows him, Stephanie will nonchalantly walk around until she can see them. Apparenly, she is good at nonchalant since it took them awhile to figure out that was what she was doing. But then they noticed, she does it all the time. Alma admires this trait in her and, in fact, tries to get her other children with younger siblings to watch out for them as well. She's got 4 kids of her own so she knows the value of having siblings looking out for each other.
See, this is something John doesn't understand - being an only child and all. He doesn't like our kids to fight or bicker with each other - ever. But he doesn't get the fact that even though they fight sometimes, they still also look out for each other. My sister and I didn't fight a whole lot, but we did sometimes. And I tormented her occasionally (that is my right as the oldest, isn't it?) But nobody else tortured her - not when I was around anyway. And I will bet you, when I send Meredith to school with Hayden this fall that he will be looking out for her (as much as he can).
Anyway, back to Daycare Tales... Alma and Chris also seem to have some sort of rivalry going on. We got to the daycare the other day and Alma was leaving to go home for just a minute. She asked Stephanie if she would like to go with her and, of course, Stephanie jumped at the chance. Chris just looked at her in disbelief and said, "That is not fair. You are cheating to be her favorite!"
Hate to tell ya, but I believe she's already won. Steffi LOVES Ms Alma. So do I - I am so glad I found her on the daycare providers website. I actually went and visited 2 places. The first lady was ok but she just seemed stuffy to me - I can't explain it and I'm sure she loves her "children" just as much and I know they had a bigger backyard with more play equipment but something didn't quite
mesh for me. Then I met Alma and, wow! The love she feels for her kids is almost palpable. But she also kept them in line. It just felt right to me immediately. Then I realized all the kids at the first place were white. Not so with Alma. Her daycare is closer to downtown so most of her kids are black and Hispanic. And to be honest, I wanted the diversity for the kids. I mean they are going to be going to school with all types of kids, why segregate them now? Let them figure out now how alike we all are and they won't even think about it when they're older. Anyway, it's what I'm used to in a daycare - seeing all the different colors of kids all playing together. It makes me happy.
