You’ll have to excuse any typos today, the tears on my keyboard are making my fingers slip.
The crew is out of school today, so they’re spending the morning back with our home daycare provider (HDCP) Ms. Benita. (Or Miss ‘Nita, as she’s been known through the years.) When school started in August, we made the difficult decision to simplify and keep all 3 kids at our school’s after-school program. It’s a good, affordable program. It’s close to home, the kids all get to be together, no age-segretation (which is huge for me!), and we know and love and respect all their teachers and caregivers there. Actually, it’s a perfectly wonderful place for them all to be.
But that means that we’re not at Ms. Benita’s every day.
And that is hard.
Ms. Benita’s is a perfectly wonderful place for them to be too.
I’m crying as I write this because I both miss her terribly and am so, so thankful that she’s been (and still is) part of our lives. There are just no words for how important good daycare is for a working mother. I simply could not function and carry on without the loving stability she has provided to the background of our family over the last 7 years. Especially after losing my mom.
Someone who knows and loves our kids. Someone who shares our Christian values. Someone who’s own marriage and family have proven the test of time and offer a living testimony to a principled life.
Someone who has years upon cumulative years of baby-raising under her belt to share with me.
From the moment I laid the Ladybug in her hands at 6 weeks old, she has loved our family through thick and thin all these 7 years and still.
This is actually the first holiday they’ve been off of school this year that I’ve had to work. Dropping them off this morning was like coming home at the holidays, like a warm cup of coffee on a rainy day, like the sweet dampness of fresh-washed baby hair against your shoulder in a rocking chair…
I cried the whole way to the office just thinking about how much it soothes my soul to follow our old routines and how God took us as a young untried couple, as brand new parents, far from our own homes and families, and blessed us so richly when He brought Ms. Benita and our church and school into our lives–answering our prayers before we even knew what to ask for.
” Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us…” (Ephesians 3:20)
