As you all know, I work at a day care. There are quite a few little tikes, complete with totally different needs and personalities. Let me give you the breakdown: Morgie-moo is 8 months old -- she's teething, learning to eat some new foods and successfully crawled yesterday. She's cute and chubby, but gets jealous if anyone comes near you when you're holding her. Next is Ayo -- a tiny-tot with cute lamb hair, he hates going to bed. He cries if he sees a blanket.
Then you have the two cute blond chubby ones: Kyler and Zilli-zoo. Though they're not related, they look like they could be. There's a remarkable difference in communication between the two: Zillia is younger, but has a HUGE vocabulary. She and I are buddies (because I read her stories) and when I come to work she screams with glee "Kissina, Kissina". [Close enough for me] Kyler on the other hand does little more than grunt like a cow. I have taught him to rub his belly to say "please" when he wants something though, and I'm very happy about that. Both these tikes are happy-go-lucky for the most part and give great cuddly hugs.
Then you have Zachie, Winter, Koda and Katie. They are the 2-3 year olds. Koda is almost mute (meaning he's a quiet kid) but he loves dinosaurs and buzz lightyear. Zachie delights in the reaction he gets when he steals toys from other kids. He's a bit mischevious, but sweet in his own right. He can surprise me sometimes by how sharing he can be, but it's never a surprise when someone's crying about a stolen toy as to WHO stole it. I chase him around a lot retrieving said stolen toys. Winter is my drama queen. She's very cute, but falls in a heap of sobs on the floor when anything doesn't go her way. The sobs usually get louder if you pay attention to her, but if you ignore her, she's soon her happy cute self again. Katie rattles off all the time, but I can't really understand her. Her mom makes a great effort to keep her hair done, which always makes her look cute. She loves to read and will often sit with a book mumbling nonesense outloud to herself.
Then you have Adam and Kennedy...the four year olds. They have a "hee-hee-haw-haw-wahhhh!" relationship. Atleast several times a day I will momentarily ban them from playing with each other because they've made each other upset and angry and are fighting. Usually, they are fairly well behaved and expert tattlers.
Then there are Joshua and Matthew. Joshua is actually a great help -- he's mature and keeps track of the kids, intervenes when two kids are fighting and can be my "eyes and ears" if I'm taking a kid to time out. He is also a tattler, but with nothing to gain from it, so generally he's just telling me what really happened.
Matthew is a little older, and I am currently trying to help him buckle down and do his piano practicing. It has taught me a valuable lesson: kids don't like piano practicing, but it's good for them. He's slowly learning how to sing along with the notes (since he has to say their names out loud when he plays them). I've decided that I am going to suffer through trying to get my kids to do piano practice, even if they don't like it, because I like singers. I remind myself when things get tough, that Matthew...and the others, have not become the wonderful people they're going to become yet, and to be patient.
The job has been an invaluable experience for me. For one, I am able to change multiple poopy diapers now without gagging, and I've learned that kids are constantly changing. You have to take each day at a time and not let yourself get overwhelmed.
It has increased my testimony that God wants us to learn something as parents, and raising children will likely teach us things that nothing else could if we're willing to turn to God to find out what He wanted us to learn.
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