I've blogged about Bunnie's best friend Nami before. She's the daughter of Olivia, our neighbor who's been helping me with childcare this past year.
A week ago, Nami got a new baby sister. We drove Olivia to the hospital. Then Nami stayed with us that night. The next morning, all of us went together to met the sister who was so super fresh.
Concurrent with sister's arrival has been Bunnie's move to a preschool. The timing of the change was due in part to Olivia needing time to rest but also because there was an opening at the preschool starting this semester. The bright side of this change is now Bunnie has a classroom full of potential friends (and parent friends for me), games, books, activities. It's a step up from the t.v. marathons he'd been up to previously.
But the downside is I've taken work away from Olivia at a really tough moment (family expanding). Bunnie was the only kid Olivia was watching. And I've taken Nami's friend away. I'm conflicted about this.
I'm conflicted because, though we don't have much money, we have enough to pay for childcare, let alone childcare options. But more than that, it's upsetting that Nami isn't going to get all the training Bunnie will. While she watches t.v., he'll be figuring out how to play with others, how to speak another language (the school is Spanish immersion), how to get ready for kindergarten.
Future test scores that might show one of these children to be advanced and the other (possibly) to be behind, sadly will be nothing more than a discrepancy of resources.
