Work

I work at a daycare. My job's hectic, but it's also very rewarding. I'm going to take you through a typical day of work.

I walk in, and put on my badge, which has a fairly bad picture of me that was taken when a bunch of three-year-olds were getting theirs taken. They got to sit on a mushroom, but I just got a chair.

Anyway, after I put on my badge and greet Hayley, the receptionist, I walk about fifteen feet to the room I work in, the 2-year-olds' room. I'm greeted by a chorus of children squealing my name, but no, don't think I'm bragging of my superior way with children; they like any excuse to make a lot of noise. After the initial hello's, and any stories hastily shouted at me as I try to quiet them down, "Matthew bwoke the baby doll's head off!" or anything I need to know from Brittany, my coworker, "Landon didn't take a nap today...." (eyebrow raise), we line up and go to snack.

Snack is an interesting time. As teenagers, it's easy to forget that kids don't eat much. At all. We sit all nine of our lovely, shouting 2-year-olds down and we say our prayer, "Our hands we fold, our heads we bow, for food and drink we thank You now. Aaaaaaaaamen." (The twos basically mumble along with the rest and robustly exclaim that amen.) After we pray, we give them their snack. This is the 3:30 snack, so they get juice, except for Opal, who's not allowed to have very much sugar, and Catherine, who curiously doesn't like juice.

They usually have either about an eighth of a cup of ice cream with sprinkles and a teeny bit of strawberry syrup, or a fourth of a graham cracker with frosting sandwich. The thing that really amazes me is the amount of time it takes some of them to eat. While it would take your average teenager one, maybe two bites to down either the ice cream or the graham cracker, it takes them six solid minutes of concentrated eating. It's actually pretty cute.

TO BE CONTINUED...