The Joy of Children, Part 1

For all of my adult life, I have worked with children in some form or fashion. For 5 years, off and on, I worked at a daycare in many capacities. I taught 4-5 year old classes, 3-4 year old classes, subbed in all classes 18 month to 5 years old, and planned/taught summer camp for 4 years. I loved it. I loved being called Miss Dana. I loved doing artwork with the kids hands. I loved walking in after having a bad morning only to have a 3 year old tell me I was beautiful. I also loved going home at the end of the without kids. I would do it again if there was any way to make a decent living at it, but right now I am the breadwinner. Working at the daycare had a drastic impact on my life, but there will be more on that later. Enjoy some pictures of my daycare days!

The Ellis girls were some of the first people I babysat from the daycare. We hung out in my first apartment a lot. This is a picture of a Halloween when we decorated/carved pumpkins. I think it was my first time to carve pumpkins! I have had a lot of "firsts" with kids I have babysat (a.k.a. my second childhood).

Hanging out on the toddler playscape. Yep, the little boy in the cool car is none other than Matthew Turman. This was taken before I started watching the Turman's. How do I know this? I misspelled Turman on the back of this picture! Matthew was an usher at our wedding and is now 10 years old. Coincidentally, he is one of my favorite people and leaves the best voicemail messages. When we told him we were moving back to Austin, he screamed into the phone and started jumping up and down on the couch, quite possibly the best reaction we received from anyone!

This was my last summer camp. All the kids are wearing tye-dye shirts we made in camp. I used to be an expert. We had a sock hop this summer and asked all the kids to wear 50's clothes. One of my co-worker's (Miss Katy) told the kids it was also going to be her birthday. One kid went home and told his parents that they were having a sock hop for Miss Katy's 50th birthday party. One little girl asked her mom to check the tag on her clothes to see if she was size 50. Another little boy told his dad he had to bring 50 pair of socks to school.

This was the last class I taught at the daycare. I left them at Christmas time to start working for dNovus. I do remember all their names (although I was good enough to write them on the back of the picture)! The coolest thing I did with this class was organize a school-wide Halloween carnival. In preparation, we painted white T-shirts with neon paint and had a black light dance to the Monster Mash. They thought I was silly.