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New Daycare Experience

This week I wake up and get my son ready for daycare. Need to put sunscreen before he leaves, make sure he wears the right shoes, eat something, get dressed, bring the plastic bag with necessities and not the backpack, it's easier to clean. First condition of the day that we must follow for him to go there, no backpacks, no extra things like toys, only the essentials in a ziplock bag.

We get in the car and drive to daycare, telling him all the fun things we might be doing today, what are they? I can't get in the daycare anymore, so I don't know which friends are going there this week, he can't play with the sandbox or any shared activities, all stations in his classroom are separate enough so kids don't mingle much. So I ask him what he does during the day and him being 3 and all, his answer is always "I don't know" or "Nothing", great.

We are at daycare now, get off the car, put on my mask, grab him and his plastic bag and line up in one of the designated spots if there is people before me. Once is our turn we talk with one of the daycare providers who is incredibly nice and tries to make this experience a fun one. She is wearing a mask and stands behind a plastic shield, takes my temperature and then his temperature and writes it all down. Then comes all the designated questions we get asked every day "Have you traveled outside of Ontario in the last 14 days" (I was here yesterday!), "Have you been in contact with a known Covid positive case" (no, wouldn't want to), "Do you have any of these symptoms: fever, shortness of breath, rash, etc, etc)". After she writes down "no" to everything, she tries to take Kingsley inside to wash his hands.

He doesn't want to go, every day he clings to me, and every day I push him away. He is fine though, it was like that even before the pandemic, I know he has fun after I leave, just this time, I am not 100% sure what sort of things he might be looking forward to, just a thing here and there he mentions (ambulance! garbage truck! tow truck!). I still leave happy, I get to work in peace, he gets to see other people that love him, and other kids he can play with however the new play is. We'll do this until September, when he is supposed to start school for the very first time in his life, and I have no idea what type of experience he will have.

Gone is my plan for his very first day of school, the idea I had of the day and all the little things I was going to do to make it special. I don't know what to expect anymore, and I barely had a grip on it before. We'll have to wait and see, for now, he is back in his wonderful daycare and we are all better for it.
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