study sessions run till 8 every evening this month. the caregiver has started leaving me a note about his day

bronze_moon_4185

it began because i asked her once what he'd eaten. now there's a page on the dining table every night. what he ate, what he refused, who he played with downstairs, and a line or two of things he said. tonight's: 'asked why bapa's office has no windows. i said ask bapa.' he's asleep by the time i'm in. i read the note standing in the kitchen with my bag still on. it's the nicest part of my day, which is a bit sad when i think about it.

5 comments

  • jade_pebble_3441

    our live-in aunt does voice notes instead. i listen in the car outside the store before i go in. same feeling

  • rose_pigeon_6633

    Keep every one of those. Our daughter's daycare sends a diary page home and we've started filing them in a folder. I'm not sure who they're for yet. Probably us, when she's fifteen.

    • saffron_window_1258

      Do keep them. We had a full year of creche diary pages and they went out with the raddi during a cleaning spree. Still annoyed about it.

  • cobalt_wave_225

    Fellow researcher here. Evening-only participant months are the hardest. What helped me was asking our recruiting team to cap evening sessions at two a week per study, and saying it early, before the schedule is built. They'll book 8 pm slots forever if nobody objects.

  • linen_marigold_6587

    found my son's babysitter notes in a drawer last year. he's 18. read them out at dinner. he pretended to be embarrassed for about two minutes then took photos of every page

    • moss_bottle_5383

      wish we'd kept anything like this. all i have from that age is blurry phone photos and a vaccination card

  • peach_compass_1070

    On-call weeks do this to me too. Our version is a whiteboard on the fridge. One thing changed it for us: our daughter started adding a drawing of her own to the board. Does your son know about the notes? He might like to put something in for you.

Add a comment

Share what happened for you. Plain text; be kind and specific.

Keep going

Keep reading

More from the parents who were here.