Shanna, Joe, two cats, and a baby.: Ellora's Daycare

It's been about a month now since Ellora started attending daycare. Things seem to be going pretty well at this point, but it didn't begin well. Ellora had a lot of separation anxiety so cried a lot whenever Joe would drop her off and then pick her up again. It also meant that she had to start riding int he back seat of the car alone for the first time, so she had to learn to amuse herself back there. It sometimes led to a lot of crying as well, poor girl! And then there were the illnesses. Back to back sickness for at least two weeks, some of which are absolutely from being at the daycare, interacting with other kids: Hand, foot and mouth, then an allergic reaction, then stomach virus with vomiting and diarrhea (which she so kindly shared with Mommy and Daddy), then a nasty cold (also shared at home) which is still lingering now! But now, she seems to be settling in nicely and isn't always so fussing, according to Joe. She's starting to sleep at daycare better as well, so she isn't coming home at night so tired.

Finding Ellora a placement in daycare was a bit of a fiasco. We spent hours upon hours over two days making phone calls, to a minimun of 50 daycare centres with no luck! The problem is twofold. First, most daycares don't accept kids under two years old! How is that possible? It seems like the majority of families rely on the grandparents to do babysitting for them, or the mother is a long-term stay at home mom. Not really an option in our case! Second is that Korean babies receive goverment assistance to subsidize daycare, so many house-mothers will use that money, which completely covers the fee, to send their kids to daycare for a few hours a few times a week, taking the opening away for someone who needs full-time care.

We had two opportunities present themselves to us. First, we found a daycare that told us they had a spot for Ellora, but it was a bit far from our home. Being that we were desparate (referring to the babysitter, who we loved, quitting suddenly) we didn't have much of a choice, so I went to check it out. I wasn't really too happy with the place since it was older and seemed a bit run down. The toys were boring and even someo of them broken, and I found out that they never let the kids play outside. I guess what turns out to be lucky for us, the manager called us back later that day to say there wasn't a spot for Ellora afterall, since it had been filled that morning by another child, and the rest of the staff weren't informed. I have to say I was kind of relieved, although also annoyed that we wasted time looking for another place.

The second option happened to be a place really close to Joe's school, in a very new and clean building. Joe and I went on our own to check it out (that means without a co-teacher to translate for us), and right away we were very please with it, so I enrolled her on the spot!

The place is called 튼튼아이어린이집 = Teun Teun Ah Ie Oe Rin Ie Jib= Healthly Baby Baby House/Daycare. It is located in an apartment unit, so it had three bedrooms, one for each of the various age groups, a large livingroom play space, kitchen for meal preparation and a washroom. There are three or four "teachers" who are each responsible for a maximum of three babies, of different age groups. Ellora's "class" has two other babies in it, one also about 9 months old, and the other just over a year. Every week they have a schedule of events, such as visits to local sites like the airplane museum. I'm not sure if Ellora goes out to all of those or if that's just the older toddlers, but she does get to go out for walks in the stroller every so often. The teachers will take out two kids at a time.

Ellora's backpack and daily log book to keep track of her health and activities. They take her temperature at least once a day and record all her sleep and feeding times.