Curtis learns about sacrifice

OR:  the babysitter quit yesterday

I know I should have seen this coming, but I kept hoping against hope that the brief mention of "going back to school" was only a whim brought on by a bad day in the stay-at-home-mom/nanny world.  Apparently not.  The house of cards crumbled yesterday when the sitter told me she would not be returning to work after Christmas.  After an hour or so of selfish thoughts of "What am I gonna do?!?!" I got down to business and actually figured out what to do.

Curtis has been attending preschool every morning on the west side of Springfield.  My teaching job is 5 miles east of Springfield.  There is no way I can drop him off and get to my own job on time.  Hence, the nanny.  However, for the remaining 5 months of the school year, I'm not really excited about bringing another stranger into my home and going through all that period of adjustment again (and who's to say the next person would stick it out the whole 5 months?)

It seems the simplest solution is to put both boys in daycare in the morning, and Curtis will have to switch to the afternoon preschool class.

When I set this up for him today, I could tell he really liked the idea of all 3 of us leaving together in the morning, starting a new school, and going to the same school as Carl.  Then I told him he could still go to the other preschool and be in the Orange Room in the afternoon.  It took about a minute until it dawned on him--his lip trembled and big tears started rolling, "But that means I'll never see my friends again!  I'll never get to see Charlie!"  Broke my heart, because of course that's the reason I wanted to keep him right where he was, if I could.

So then we had our lesson about making sacrifices.  I told him that when a soldier has to go away from his family, everyone else in the family has to make sacrifices, too, and this is the one Curtis has to make.