I feel so bad...

Well, things went better than I expected yesterday morning with the new babysitter. Haleigh was a bit shy to begin with, but perked up when an 8 month old baby girl woke up and wanted to play with her. They played with a little basketball for a while, then I told Haleigh that okay, you’re going to stay here today and play with the kids, and I’ll see you later, okay? She didn’t even think twice before she said “okay, see ya!” So she threw me a kiss as I was walking out the door and that was that.

I called around noon and apparently she realized I wasn’t just stepping out for a minute, and she was periodically crying for me. I think she may have been overwhelmed by all the kiddos. Her caregiver told me Haleigh clung to her stuffed frog most of the day, but played well with the other kids, and ate and napped really well too. When Chad and I showed up in the evening to pick her up she was cuddled on the couch with a school-age girl who she made friends with. She saw me and immediately started bawling and generally freaking out because she was just so happy that we were there to get her. On the drive home, she chatted non-stop with us about her new friends.

Last night, she didn’t want to go to bed; she kept crying for me. Like really crying hard. She’s such a good sleeper that I’ve never had to let her ‘cry it out’ so it’s really hard for me to just let her cry. She knows that if she needs me, she just says so and I’ll go in her room and see what she needs, but that rarely happens. But since it was 1 ½ hours past her bedtime, I just let her cry, and two minutes later she was asleep. It must have had to do with being at the babysitter; she didn’t want to let us out of her sight.

This morning, she cried. I presumed that it would be harder this morning, and I was right. Now she knows what's going on. It’s going to be a long week.