Babysitter angst

Luke's daycare had "curriculum night" on Tuesday and Jill and I both wanted to go so we hired the babysitter, Cassandra. (I think they have these twice a year, and we have both gone to all of them, but Tuesday was especially good because there was a video! Luke's daycare got chosen as a site for a training video on the HighScope curriculum for infants and toddlers. The film crew hung out all day, hooked up each of the teachers with microphones and stuck cameras in everybody's faces while they went about their daily business. Then they pulled out the good bits and used them to illustrate various HighScope principles for young toddlers. E.g. they'd show a segment where one of the teachers gave a baby a bunch of weird stuff like an empty spool for thread and the subtitle would say: "Provide children with a variety of objects!" Or a couple of toddlers would leap off the 2-foot-high play blocks and the subtitle would say "Monitor children closely as they explore!" Yes, grandmas and other interested parties will hopefully be able to view the video when it has been finalized; this was like an initial screening for Hollywood insiders before the final cut gets made.)

Anyhow, we got a babysitter so we could see all this. Luke bawled as we left the house. "DON'T GO!!!"

When I got home (mama had to got straight to a night meeting after curriculum night) Luke and Cassandra were on the couch reading a book together. He looked a little shellshocked but he was mostly OK. Though very quickly he was pretty rude to Cassandra: "Bye!" he told her before she was really preparing to leave. Babysitters have to put up with a lot.

Cassandra explained that it took him almost a half hour to stop crying. Finally she got him to eat some dinner and two of Sarah's fabulous ginger cookies. And they made some really cute drawings of everybody in the household and eventually some of his favorite book and song characters too. (Oh and the plant near the dinner table, at Luke's insistence.)
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After Cassandra left I talked with him about his evening.

D: Can you tell me what happened, Lucas?
L: I cried. Upset.
D: Why were you upset?
L: I missed you a lot!
D: That is sweet Lucas. You know I will always come back though. What did Cassandra do?
L: Hug me.
D: That was nice of her.
L: "Shhh!" "Shhh!"
D: Did that help you?
L: I'm better now. She's nice lady.

It was a very intense experience for him and one consequence of that was that he got incredibly articulate. The conversation actually went on much longer than the above excerpt suggests.