It's the next morning and we are meeting with Tanya today again at the Nursery, hopefully today will be better than yesterday. Anyway, I get up and head toward the shower, once showered I get myself dressed and check in on Blaine and decide to leave him to sleep. I go downstairs and have breakfast before heading back up again.
"Blaine? Sweetie, time to get up" I coo as I rub his stomach gently to ease him awake.
"Daddy" he yawns.
"Hey baby, let's get up so we can have breakfast" I coo again as I watch him stretch before lifting him out of his crib. I take him to his changing table and lie him on it. I change his nappy, throwing it in the bin and putting his pyjamas back on as he will probably get messy with his breakfast.
"What'd you want for breakfast baby?" I ask him as I carry him down the stairs.
"An'ackes" he cheers.
"Alright, we can have pancakes" I smile at him as I clip him into his highchair. I get the ingredients out I need to make pancakes with and the sauces as well.
"Blaine, today we are going back to the Nursery -
"No" he interrupts me.
"Blaine, listen, we are going back to see if it would suit you to go, so you can make new friends sweetie" I tell him.
"No, wan' 'tay 'ome" he starts to cry as I flip the pancakes.
"I know you do baby but I tell you what, if daddy decides that you do go, you can go for 1 day and a half, and then we can go do what ever you want afterwards each time, does that sound like a plan?" I ask him as I start to put pancakes on a plate.
"No" he sobs.
"Sweetie, it will be good for you, what are you scared of?" I ask him as I walk over to him.
"Daddy no 'ome 'ack" he cries.
"Oh sweetie, daddy will always come back for you ok, daddy wasn't going to leave you there, that would be silly daddy" I try and cheer him up as I take him out of his seat and hug him.
"Eah, silly daddy" he laughs a little.
"There we go, we can try it out ok and if you absolutely hate it there for whatever reason, daddy won't send you anymore, ok?" I tell him and I feel him nod into my shoulder.
"Good, now let's eat some yummy pancakes" I cheer. Although I had my breakfast, I decide that one pancake isn't gonna hurt. After breakfast, I change Blaine into similar clothes to yesterday, a dark coloured long sleeve polo shirt tucked into some denim jeans.
"You want Batman socks again?" I chuckle at him.
"Eah" he cheers. I slip his socks on before carrying him back down to go play while I repack the bag and empty out the empty milk bottles that he had yesterday and putting fresh ones in, ready.
"Come on then sweetie, let's get shoes and coats on" I call him over as I finish putting my coat on.
"Good boy" I whisper as I slip his coat on and then his shoes. I take him out to the car and clip him in to his seat, before getting in the drivers seat and heading back to the Nursery. Once we get there, I leave Blaine in his seat while I get his pushchair out and set it up.
"Come on then baby" I say as I unclip him and pull him out of his seat. I then put him in his pushchair and clip him in. We walk in and see the nice lady again that was at the reception.
"Well, hello again" she smiles at us.
"Hey" I smile back at her.
"I heard you left" she says.
"Yeah, I think Blaine got too overwhelmed with everything" I explain to her.
"Ah ok, well nice to see you here" she says.
"Thanks, do I just go?" I ask her.
"Of course, you know where it is?" She asks.
"Yeah thanks" I smile at her.
"Ok, see you in a bit"
"Alright, bye" I say before walking to Tanya's office. I knock on the door a couple times before she answers.
"Hello, how are we all?" She says as she holds the door open for me so I can get in with Blaine.
"We're good thanks and you?" I ask as I sit down in one of the chairs, that are in front her desk.
"Great" she smiles.
"So yesterday, I showed you around and then you stayed for a while and we all know how that went huh?" She says.
"Um yes" I chuckle a little.
"So, would you like to stay again and carry on observing what we do or?" She asks.
"Yeah we can do that"
"I forgot to mention one more other thing about Blaine, as you know he is in nappies, he will only allow me or a close friend of mine or a family member to change him, is that going to be an issue?" I ask her.
"Not at all, obviously we wouldn't leave them in a dirty nappy all day and go home with rashes and everything, but if you are comfortable enough for us to have your contacts so we can FaceTime by phone, so if he is difficult, we will ask if he wants to see you by FaceTime, we always keep a phone by the changing stations, but if it does get to a point where he is literally not having any of that, we will ring up just to say that he really wants you to do it" she explains.
"Ok, that is absolutely fine"
"So, are we going to make a friend today Blaine?" She then looks at Blaine, but he doesn't respond.
"Ok, sounds great" we laugh. We stand up and again she holds the door open for me.
"Thanks"
"You're welcome" she says as she leads us to Zoe's classroom again.
"Hello Kurt, Blaine" she greets us.
"Hey Zoe" I reply.
"Are we here for the day?" She asks.
"Hopefully" I chuckle.
"So, let's get on with the day, shall we?" She says as she leads us to a table at the back so we could observe what happens while Tanya snuck out of the room. While the other kids were playing, Blaine yet again dragged me to the puzzles.
"He has an interest in puzzles" Zoe says as she walks over here.
"I know, we have loads at home" I tell her.
"Ah ok, does he play with anything else? I ask this because he will probably just play with puzzles all the time" she explains.
"He's still into blocks, he will sometimes play with his cars, maybe his big Lego blocks, he has a small basket ball hoop that he likes to play with, his bowling set and a bubble machine" I explain to her.
"Wow, that is a lot of toys, we probably have all of them instead of just puzzles" she explains as she looks at Blaine, probably trying to see if he will play with anything else but puzzles.
"Blaine, you want to go play with anything else?" I ask him.
"No" he mumbles as he tries to put a few pieces together. Zoe moved me away from the table to have a word with me.
"Oh god" I say.
"Don't worry, it's nothing to worry about" she chuckles a little.
"Do you mind if we took the puzzles away when the children go outside later? This is so that we can see how he interacts with other children" she asks.
"That's absolutely fine" I smile at her.
"Great" she says.
"I must warn you, he might not be happy about it, but if it means that he will interact and play with other children and toys to keep him interested then I'd rather him be miserable whilst he plays" I chuckle.
"Brilliant, they will probably head out in a few anyway, so that would then be my chance to take them away" she says.
"Ok that's fine" I tell her. I then go back over to Blaine, who was then starting another puzzle.
"Baby, why don't we play with something else, what about the bubble machine?" I ask him.
"No" he grumbles. A few minutes pass and Zoe calls out that we can go outside. I slip Blaine's coat back on and we head out. Blaine wanted to go on the swings but Chris was on there.
"You can go on the other one sweetie" I tell him.
"No" he hides behind my legs.
"What about the slide?" I ask him and I feel his head nod a 'yes' against my leg.
"Let's go then" I tell him and he runs of to the slide. He climbs up it and then sits down.
"Go on Blaine" I cheer as he just sat there. He finally goes down it, he plays on that for a little while until Dan comes along and starts to go on it. Blaine comes running back to me.
"Go play on the slide again" I tell him.
"No"
"Why not?" I ask him as I crouch down to him. He just shrugs at me though.
"Is it because Dan is on there?" I ask him.
"Eah" he mumbles.
"Nothing to be afraid of sweetie, he isn't going to hurt you" I soothe him as I rub his arm up and down.
"Go play with Dan" I tell him, but he still refuses. Dan then comes over to us.
"Bwaine? Pway wit me?" He asks as he looks at me.
"I don't know, perhaps Blaine can answer that one" I smile at Dan.
"Blaine?" He just whines at Dan as if to say 'go away'.
"Blaine! We tell them politely if we don't want to play" I warn him.
"No 'ank 'ou" he grumbles.
"And why don't you want to play with Dan? He's just trying to be friendly" I tell Blaine.
"Daddy" he then just sobs.
"Sorry Dan, maybe another time" I politely decline to the little boy as I pick Blaine up.
"Tay" he mumbles sadly as he runs over to Chris. Whilst I was calming Blaine down, I see that Chris was standing on the swing, Zoe must have caught on too when she heard Liza shouting at him to get down and before we knew it, he was on the floor, sobbing his eyes out.
"Chris, we have told you plenty of times to not do that as you could get yourself seriously injured like now, for now we are going to let this one slide, but if it happens again, you will go to timeout, now let's go get you cleaned up" Zoe says as she carries the crying toddler indoors. There was another T.A. out here, so it wasn't just me looking after 5 kids, going of in all sorts of directions. After an hour of playing outside, we all go back in and the younger kids go down for a nap before lunchtime. So in the classroom it was just me, Blaine, Zoe, Liza and Kristen, the T.A. left to have her lunch break early before the kids woke up from their nap.
"Blaine, daddy is just popping to the toilet, ok?" I tell him. It was all a lie, earlier on, Zoe had a word with me to see if I could pop out for a few minutes to see how Blaine would get on. Liza and Kristen were told to play quietly, but not to worry if Blaine started to cry and scream, although they were probably used to it now with the younger ones.
"No daddy" he starts to cry as he starts follows me.
"Baby, you're staying here, daddy will be gone for a few minutes" I soothe him as I place him back on the chair and quickly made an escape. I could hear his cries, but I chose to ignore them although my heart broke a little. I look through a window where I can see them but they can't see me. I can also hear what they say.
"Come on sweetie, daddy will be back in a few" Zoe says to him as she tries to calm him down, although he was not having any of it.
"Blaine? Sweetie? I need you to calm down before you make yourself sick" she coos at him before picking him up.
"Is there anything you would like to play with?" She asks him while she rubs his back up and down as well as walking around the room.
"Ubbles?" He whispers, calming himself down with a few hiccups.
"Ok, do you know where your dummy is before we start?" She asks him.
"Dare" he whispers again whilst pointing to his pushchair that I left in the room. She walks over to it and finds his dummy in his seat. She then takes him back over to the bubble machine and places him down so she can put the bubble thing into the machine.
"Would you like to help?" She asks him.
"Eah" he perks up a little. He crouches next her and Zoe puts the bubble mixture in his hands before putting her hands over the top of his so that she can help him put the bubbles into the machine. He stands back up again and stands back a bit from the bubble machine, waiting for it to turn on. Once Zoe turned it on, bubbles started to come out of it and Blaine was actually running around in the bubbles, he was too busy messing around that he didn't notice Liza and Kristen joining in. Even Zoe joined in a bit. Blaine then stopped once he realised Liza and Kristen were there.
"Why'd you stop sweetie?" Zoe walks over to him, but he doesn't respond.
"Is it because of Liza and Kristen?" She asks and he nods his head 'yes'.
"It's alright sweetie, everybody here is friendly and if anyone were to say anything mean or pick on anyone, then they get told off and put into timeout, ok?" She explains to him and again he nods his head 'yes'.
"So, why don't we go play again?" She smiles at him and he runs back to the bubbles where Liza and Kristen waited for him. I watch Blaine smiling and giggling as he messed around with the older girls and start to interact with them. It took him sometime to get over the fact that I was gone, but he finally started to play. I walk back in there and his eyes immediately went straight to me.
"Daddy" he cheers as he runs over to me and I pick him up, cuddling him.
"Hey sweetie, were you playing with the bubble machine just then?" I ask him as if I knew nothing about what I just saw.
"Eah, me 'ake 'ew fwiends" he says.
"Wow, who are they?" I ask him as I set him on the floor and he drags me to Liza and Kristen.
"Dis 'Iza an' dis 'Ten" he introduces them.
"Hello ladies" I smile at them.
"Ello" Liza says.
"Hi" Kristen says. It was soon close to Blaine having lunch, so when the younger kids woke up and had a change, we sit them all down at the tiny kid table and give them their lunches. Again, they offered us lunch, which we kindly accepted.
"No daddy" Blaine mumbles as he gets down from the table and comes over to me.
"What's wrong?" I sigh.
"No hungy" he says, but his belly says otherwise.
"Ok sure" I try not to chuckle.
"Is it because everyone else is up there?" I ask him.
"Eah" he mumbles.
"Why don't you sit in between Liza and Kristen then, there's a seat there" I tell him but he just stays put. I walk over there and ask the girls if Blaine could sit in between them and they both agreed.
"See Blaine, they want you to sit next to them" I soothe him as I pick him up.
"Bwaine" Kristen cheers as I place Blaine on the seat. He soon sits there and eats some of his lunch with his sippy cup.
"Daddy, done" he says as walks over to me with his plate.
"Is that all you can eat baby?" I ask him as he had a few crisps left and one sandwich.
"Mmhm" he hums.
"Can you eat half the sandwich please?" I ask him.
"No" he whines, close to his nap time.
"Just half of it and that's it" I tell him. When we went to the doctors, he told me Blaine's weight was alright, but he was still under the 'underweight' line, but he was slowly getting there and making progress.
"No" he starts to cry. He puts his plate back on the table and runs over to his pushchair, trying to climb in it.
"No, until you eat half of your sandwich, you can go down for a nap" I tell him off as I bring him out of his pushchair and place him on his seat, making sure to cut his sandwich in half. He gets up again and attempts his pushchair.
"The longer you mess around, the less time you will have for a nap" I tell him as I place him back on his seat, this time he stays put and starts to eat the half sandwich.
"See what I mean about lunch times, that is why he's put in a highchair" I chuckle lightly to Zoe. Once Blaine had his sandwich, I place him in his pushchair to nap with his milk bottle, dummy and his blanket. He finally dozed off and I managed to play with the other kids for a while.
"What 'our 'ame?" Dan asks me.
"My name is Kurt" I smile at him as we built with the big Lego blocks.
"Urt, why Bwaine no pway wit me?" He asks sadly as he looks at me.
"He's just a bit scared and shy at the moment sweetie, maybe he will play with all of you one by one so he can get to know you all, but we just have to be patient, ok?" I tell him.
"Tay be 'ent" he mumbles sadly.
"It's ok honey, he'll play with you sooner or later ok, let's just play with these for now" I smile at him again and he smiles back.
"There we go, a smile" I cheer and that made him giggle. We carried on playing until Blaine woke up.
"Hey sweetie" I coo as I unclip him from his seat and into my arms.
"Let's change your bum shall we?" I say to him as I walk into the changing station, I asked before hand if I was allowed to go in here when Blaine woke up, knowing he would need a change, they said it was ok for us to do that. I lie Blaine down on one of the many changing tables and pull out our supplies from the bag I brought with me.
"Stay still baby" I try and keep him still on the table as he kept on wiggling.
"Daddy, pway" he whines.
"I know you do baby, daddy is nearly done" I soothe as I start to put a fresh nappy on him.
"There we go, all done" I tell him as I pick him up off the changing table. I walk back out with Blaine on my hip and place him down once we got to the kids.
"Now you can go play" I tell him. He runs over to Dan and starts to play with Dan.
"Looks like he's finally getting there" Tanya comes from behind me.
"Oh my gosh" I jump a little as I place a hand on my heart.
"Sorry" she chuckles.
"It's fine" I smile up at her.
"Urrr yeah he does actually, he just went straight over to Dan and didn't even bother with me" I chuckle.
"Anyway, not to be rude or anything, but how did you know all of that?" I ask her.
"Oh, we have CCTV for safety reasons and also we can look back to see if a child is lying when they get in trouble" she explains.
"Ah ok" we watched the children play and mess around until Blaine came running up to me.
"What's up?" I ask him, but all he does is lift his arms up. I pick him up and he hides in my neck.
"You remember Tanya, don't you sweetie?" I ask him, he just doesn't respond.
"Blaine, nobody in here are going to judge you or hurt you, ok, everybody in here are friendly, you may get the occasional fight between the littler ones and that's just about it, if anyone were mean to you or any other child, we tell them off and they go to timeout, alright?" Tanya explains to him.
"Daddy" he whines.
"Baby, did you hear all that?" I ask him and I feel him nod into my shoulder.
"Ok, so what was it that you wanted to tell me, there must be a reason you came over"
"Duice pwease" he whispers into my neck.
"Alright" I say as I make my way over to his pushchair and find his cup in the changing bag.
"There you go" I say as I pass it to him and put him on the ground again so he can go play.
"Ah, no running with your cup" I call out and he stops running and walks back over to Dan.
"Thank you" the day soon dragged on and the children had left to go home. Me and Blaine stayed back so that I could help them tidy the Nursery. Blaine also got used to everyone, even Tanya.
"We appreciate the help, but you can go home now if you want" Tanya says as she puts away a few toys.
"It's ok, it's the least we could do, I mean you've offered us lunch twice" I explain as I clean up the bubble machine.
"Where's Blaine?" Zoe asks, I turn around and couldn't see him anywhere neither.
"Blaine?" I call out. Tanya then nudges me silently and points to the pushchair, where Blaine must have tried really hard not to laugh as he hid under his blanket in the pushchair.
"I wander where Blaine could be" I call, loud enough for him to hear.
"Kurt, is he under the table?" Tanya plays along.
"Nope, not under there" I smile at her.
"What about the cupboards?" Zoe says as she checks in there.
"Not in there neither?" I ask her.
"No, oh dear, what are we going to do?" I sigh and I start to hear Blaine giggle.
"Where did that come from?" Tanya gasps.
"Perhaps it came from - I start to walk over to the pushchair silently.
"Over here" I start to tickle Blaine once I got his blanket of him.
"No daddy, top" he laughs.
"Nope" I start to laugh as well.
"Daddy" he laughs again, trying to push my hands away.
"Come on you monkey, you helping us clear up or not?" I ask him as I stop tickling him and lift him out of his pushchair.
"Tay" he says and starts to clear up the toys. We finally clear up and it was time to head back home for dinner.
"Thanks so much for helping us tidy up" Tanya hugs me.
"No problem, always know what it's like to clear up after kids" I chuckle.
"You have another kid?" She asks.
"Oh um no sorry, what I meant is that my friend has a little girl herself about Blaine's age and sometimes I babysit for her" I explain.
"Ah ok"
"Come on then Blaine" I call over as he helped finish tidying up with Zoe.
"Before you go, let's just head back to my office" she smiles at Blaine. We walk to her office and she opens her draw to pull out a bag of sweets.
"Here Blaine, all for you" she says as she passes them to Blaine.
"You can have a few as we will be having dinner when we get home" I tell him.
"Sorry, did you want me to take them back?" Tanya apologises.
"It's ok, he's only allowed a few before dinner though as - ok that's enough" I quickly tell Blaine as I take the sweets out of his hands.
"Yeah as I was saying, he's only allowed a few as he probably won't eat all of his dinner or at least most of it" I explain to her.
"Ok, well I hope to see Blaine here if you do decide other than that, thank you both for coming and hope to see you again, bye" she smiles.
"Sure, I'll think about it, but yeah bye" I smile back and leave the office.
"Stay there sweetie" I say as I fold the pushchair and put it in the boot.
"Come on then" I lift him up and place him in his seat.
"Baby, where's your dummy and blanket?" I ask him as I clip him in.
"Dum dum" he then starts to cry.
"Baby, I don't know where it is" I search in his pushchair in the boot and then the changing bag. I couldn't even find the spare one. 'Great going home with a crying Blaine all the way home' I thought.
"Dum" he sobs.
"Sorry baby, looks like we are going home without it" I try my best to soothe him.
"Aaahhh" he sobs.
"I'm sorry sweetie" I sit in the back with him and try to calm him down at least a little bit before going home. I then see Tanya with Blaine's two dummies and his blanket.
"Hey, I found these on the floor in my office" she comes up to me.
"And I think somebody might be missing them" she says as she smiles and looks at Blaine.
"There's one dummy" she brings it from behind her back and shows Blaine, making him giggle a little.
"There's the other one" she smiles as she does the same with that one, making Blaine giggle again.
"What else are we missing, hmm?" She thinks.
"Bwanket" he cheers.
"You're right" she says as she pulls that from behind her back as well.
"Daddy" he laughs.
"Is that funny?" I chuckle as well and he nods his head 'yes'.
"Alright say thank you" I tell him, once we all calmed down a bit.
"Ank 'ou" he says.
"You're welcome sweetie" she smiles again. I get out of the back and shut his door before thanking Tanya and getting in the drivers seat and heading home. We have dinner and Blaine runs off in the hallway, probably knowing dad will be here any minute. He sits near the door with his milk bottle and makes sure that there is enough room so dad can get in.
"Hey kiddo, you waiting for me?" Dad chuckles as he walks in the door a few minutes after.
"Eah" he giggles behind his bottle.
"Up you get" he huffs as he lifts Blaine up and onto his feet, dad takes his coat off and puts it on the rack and was about to nudge Blaine to move so he could get through, but Blaine just stood there, burped a little then threw up all of his milk with a bit of his dinner.
"Daddy" he then sobbed and put his arms in the air.
"Baby, stay there, daddy needs to go get some things to clean up" I try and soothe him as best as I could.
"Daddy" he sobs again before throwing up some more milk. I quickly run upstairs and grab a few cleaning things, before quickly running back down the stairs. I rush over to Blaine and carefully take his shirt off while Carole takes his milk bottle and starts to do Blaine a sippy cup of water.
"Were you drinking too fast or was your tummy too full that you didn't want to tell me or was it something else?" I ask him as I start to clean him up a bit.
"Tummy fwull, bu' firsty" he cries.
"Why didn't you ask me to have some water then instead of milk baby, or maybe even help you burp a little?" I ask him but he just shrugs.
"Were you a little embarrassed to ask?" I coo and he nods his head 'yeah' before sobbing again.
"Alright, we can go have a quick bath, brush teeth and then have some water for bed, ok?" I tell him as I strip of his clothes and pick him up after dad and I cleared up the floor.
"Thanks Carole" I say to her as I grab the cup from her. I take Blaine up, give him a quick bath, make him brush his teeth and then get him into some cosy pyjamas.
"You wanna sleep with daddy tonight?" I ask him as he yawns into my shoulder and nods his head 'yes'.
"Alright, here slowly drink this, ok?" I tell him as I lie him down on my bed and tuck him in with everything that he sleeps with. I quickly get changed and lie down with Blaine for a while, once he was asleep, I quietly sneak out of the room to make him a bottle for later on when he wakes up during the night, which he probably will, a couple more dummies as spares and then another couple of watered sippy cups, I head back up and put the things down on the bedside table next to me. I go into the bathroom and brush my teeth and wash my face, I say night to everyone before going back upstairs and lying in bed for a while, I then go to sleep.